As the 2024 academic year commenced on Monday, Vunakanau Primary School in the East New Britain province experienced a slow start of enrolments for the first day of school. Head Teacher Mr. Steven Taharin told PNG HAUSBUNG there was a good turn up for continuing students but with the new enrolments, they only saw less than 100 students register. “Today, we just enrolled the new intakes and the continuing students and about 80+ students came in.” He added, they are expecting more students to enrol during the week especially, the inclusion of grade 1 students and grade 3 students to enrol. He further stated that, due to the delay of GTFS payments, parents have agreed to pay a component fee of K100 for the past 2 years to help the school stay afloat. “Though the government mentioned that there is free education for everyone across the board, but since last year during the PNC meeting, all the parents have agreed to pay something to the school.” “This is because the funding from the national government does not arrive to quickly, therefore, parents agreed to pay the K100 fee.”