Porebada Primary School in Central Province is in dire need of more teachers’ houses and classrooms.
The school is located within Porebada Village in the Kairuku Hiri District and has a population of more than 1000 students which includes the elementary school.
The village has a population of over 10,000 people and this has seen an increase of students every year.
The school started in the 1950s and is now a level six standard with 24 teachers, and is a feeder school to Redscar High School.
Deputy Head Teacher Kute Nokae revealed that the school only has 15 teachers’ houses with nine teachers accommodated by the village.
Nokae also revealed that the school is also in dire need of two classrooms, one each for grade seven and eight classes.
He said due to the shortage of classrooms, they’re forced to trim grade six classes from four to three when they reach grade seven.
“Students tend to give up school along the way, some get terminated or transfer to other schools so from there we are able to trim the grade seven classes from four to three every year.
“At the moment we try our best to sort out teachers’ accommodation.
“The teachers who are from the area are accommodated by their families so that helps us solve our housing issues,” Nokae said.
The school expressed its gratitude to ExxonMobil for providing new desks for four classrooms and a teacher’s house.
PNG LNG provides assistance to the school for infrastructure development as Porebada is one of the impact villages of the LNG project.