Morobe’s provincial program advisor for education, Keith Tangui, has confirmed the Morobe Provincial Government’s free education commitment for 2023.
Governor Luther Wenge has given his assurance that all school fees – from elementary to secondary and Vocational Education and Training schools – will be met during his tenure.
“I told him, ‘Governor, you got to have a lot of money to pay the fees because Morobe doesn’t budget more than K300,000 (a year)’,” said Tangui.
“So, do you think you’ll get that money? And he said, ‘I’ll pay’.
“That’s why the Provincial Education Board (PEB) said, we will get together with the governor, have a word with him and thus, allow him to say okay for the PEB endorsed fees from last year to be collected by the schools.
“PEB is the decision-making body of schools in Morobe.
“They said we’ll allow the schools to collect the same amount of fees collected last year (2021), which is K370 for primary schools, K200 for elementary schools, K700 for day students in secondary schools, K900 for boarders and K600 for TVET. The project fees.”
In line with the governor’s commitment, the provincial education division has compiled data to see how much should go to each school depending on the number of students.
Tangui said so far, the elementary sector has about 2 million students, high school has 7,000 students, provincial schools have 2,000, 318,000 students in the primary level, 22,000 in the secondary schools while Vocational Education and Training schools have 2,000 students.
The total number of students that the MPG should budget for is 2,635,916.
Tangui outlined that Morobe has 1,427 schools with 3,656 teachers.
The province will need over K300 million to effectively carry out its activities for an academic year.