Photo Courtesy of Seawanhaka

Source: "Red Soil"

Free Education is a over crowded classroom, more than 6 students sharing a textbook, a lot of noise and no concentration while the teacher is talking, teacher does not have enough time to spend with every student, etc, etc. This is what a teacher’s definition is of ‘Free Education’. A talk between a group of teachers at the East Sepik Education office was an eye opener for most parents who were also there to check on their children’s school continuation name lists.

“Apart from the already out of hand problem of not enough classrooms, teachers, desks, school materials, proper toilets, low teachers wages, the government without any consideration whatsoever has to pile more onto our already exhausted shoulders, said a Secondary School Principal.

“I am a school principal who should be checking on my teachers to make sure what they need and so on so forth is not a problem, but I end up teaching too because most of the teachers have left, or just decided to stay home because they can’t handle or simply refuse to take on the pressure,” he said.

The female teachers were very vocal on how difficult it is to make individual student assessments, since there’s too many of them. They expressed how the pressure causes them to yell at their own children and even husbands they when return home from a hard day at school.

It’s clear that they are traumatized from that experience and still they cannot get out, trapped whether they like it or not with not a raise in their pay packages year after year, and the government does not care.

Imagine, if these are teachers and principals of town schools talking about not enough classrooms, desks, teachers, toilets, etc, and 6 students sharing a text book, imagine the situation back in the villages.

One too many mines mining and to mine gold, nickel, cobalt, chromite, coal, copper and more to come, yet not a single change for schools and teachers nationwide.

One too many logging taking place almost everywhere in the country, large pieces of land left barren and the logs shipped daily, yet not a single drop of log money changes appearances of schools in the country.

One too many Fish Canneries, our fish stocks said to be down now on the verge of being wiped out in ten to twenty years time as a result and yet, not a single drop of fisheries money gets to the schools. 2015, another year has begun.