Papua New Guinea must have a student-oriented Education Sector Plan to achieve the government’s vision 2050 and PNG Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and Targets.
This was the recommendation made at the National Civil Society Coalition consultation workshop for the draft Education Sector Development Plan (2022-2026) on Wednesday (Feb, 23).
The one-day workshop jointly conducted by Papua New Guinea Education Advocacy Network (PEAN) and the Consultative Implementation and Monitoring Council (CIMC) was for Civil Society Organisations to provide their views on the draft five-year Education Sector Plan.
More than 30 participants from civil society organisations from different sectors including education, disability, academia, private citizens, human rights, and researchers and volunteers attended the consultation, to ensure that the ESDP is inclusive and covers all areas of delivering quality education that is necessary for human resource development and growth.
Prof Kenneth Sumbuk representing academia said achieving quality is to make the education system more student-focused.
The participants were made some key recommendations to include in the ESDP, which are:
• Education must be inclusive and accessible to all school-age children including children with disabilities. Accessibility must be addressed at all levels from early childhood, primary, secondary, and TVET.
• Promote and support research and development, accountability, transparency, and moral and ethical practice.
• The Education Sector must have a master plan for all infrastructure to meet benchmarked standards across all levels of education institutions; so a growing school population.
• The plan must capture and ensure specialists are available to train teachers to teach children with special needs at all levels of the education system;
• FODE and TVET should be an alternative pathway to cater grade 8 students.
• Must recognize the disability population

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