More than 200,000 students will be graduating from primary schools by 2020.
According to the Department of Education projections, it is assumed that possibly 70% or 140,000 will proceed into grade 9 and 10 secondary education.
However, Secretary for Education Dr Uke Kombra has raised concerns as to where the students will be at the 6th Provincial Vocational Centres Co-ordinators’ Conference in Port Moresby on Monday.
“Where will these students go after Grade 10 if our upper secondary schools only cater for 50% of the graduands?
“Where will these 105,000 students go to? What will they be doing?
“These are very challenging questions for us in the business of writing and planning government TVET policy and implementation at all levels of the government and partners, especially the churches,” Dr Kombra said.
He said an effective TVET System for PNG requires the commitment of the national government, industry, non-government TVET providers such as churches operate in a free market but all work within set.
“The concern here is the need for PNG to establish adequate national structures and frameworks for information, communication, collaboration and coordination among these ministries and state agencies.”
He added that TVET laws and policy guidelines from DOE is of the view that PNG should have an articulated national policy guidelines that include these principles:
- A national approach to TVET policy development and implementation;
- The establishment of appropriate structures and agencies to implement TVET policy;
- The allocation and/or co-ordination of funding to support policy development, implementation and review. This includes funding from donor organisations and agencies and financing TVET thorough corporate taxation schemes and endowments.