With most of the extra Grade Nine students in Lae being sent to the Malahang Technical Secondary School, the institution is desperately looking at alternatives.
Lae, in Morobe Province, is currently experiencing what has been described as an “over-selection of Grade Nine students”.
With an improved performance of hundreds of Grade Eight students in their 2023 national examinations, secondary schools in Lae are now unable to cater for the large number of Grade Nine intakes.
The top schools of Bugandi, Lae secondary and Busu are turning students and their parents and guardians away due to limited space. And based on an agreement reached during a recent principals’ meeting, the excess students will be taken in by the Malahang Technical Secondary School and Bumayong Lutheran Secondary School.
Principal of Malahang tech, Winstanly Taomba, and his teachers are already stretched thin and stressed out.
“We were expecting 200 students but now we have almost 360 students, Grade Nine,” he stated.
“They gave us the first list, we were working on it when the second list came out with additional numbers so the total population of Grade Nine students now is 360; who are already here, we’ve put them into classes but we still have parents outside. They’re coming with letters from the education office; some prominent people like police officers and very important people that we should consider them but we may not be able to because we have gone past the total population of students that we should have.”
Malahang tech is a dual curriculum institution; students also take trade courses apart from the regular academic subjects. This means that apart from regular classrooms, they also have trade buildings outfitted with the necessary equipment for mechanical trade classes like auto electrical, motor mechanic, panel beating and spray painting.
“We’re going through redevelopment so now we don’t have the classrooms for Grade Nine,” he continued. “We were expecting only four Grade Nine classes but because of this increase, we are going to have six classes. But we don’t have classrooms for two of those classes. I don’t know how we’ll work these few weeks to get bush material classrooms or something up.
“It will really affect our TVET classes. With the grades 9-12, we should have between 20 and 25 students per class for a trade class. But now it will go up to 50. The whole idea of competency-based training will not be followed. But I will try my best to sort this out.”
The principal suggested that primary schools, like the nearby Bowali Primary School, should be elevated to high school status to address this issue.