According to the National Education Association of the United States, Children who receive a high quality education before the age of five, enjoy significant medium to long term benefits including less likely to repeat a grade, less likely to have special needs, more likely to graduate from high school and be higher wage earners.
These were some of the issues highlighted at the meeting between the Kavieng District Development Authority (KDDA) and New Ireland Provincial Education Division in Kavieng last month with Kavieng MP Ian Ling-Stuckey, also present.
“Our KDDA education policy to continue infrastructure spending fully supports and is consistent with, the UN sustainable development goal number 4 (SDG4) to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all,” said Ling-Stuckey.
He stated that infrastructure funding for elementary classrooms were typically K25,000 but those with a larger catchment area receive up to K50,000.
Mr. Ling-Stuckey stated that with record infrastructure spending on classrooms in the district, to major problems they have been identified and assessed is the establishment of a monitoring and evaluation and a review of the implementation of classroom construction, should Board of Management continue to build classrooms or should qualified service providers be considered as well” he said.