Applications for Chevening Fellowships 2024-2025 for PNG Students
The Papua New Guinea University of Technology Ranked No 1 in PNG
The Papua New Guinea University of Technology (Unitech, Lae) has been ranked the best university amongst six (6) Papua New Guinea universities according to UniRank. UniRank is an international higher education directory that reviews accredited universities and colleges in the world.
For the University, this is great news since it used to be third and second-best in the last couple of years but made its way to number one in August 2020.
With the current ranking, PNG University ranks are as follow:
- University of Technology
- Divine Word University,
- The University of PNG,
- The University of Goroka,
- Pacific Adventist University and
- PNG University of Natural Resources and Environment.
The six universities are ranked based on the criteria that the university is;
- being chartered,
- licensed or
- accredited by the appropriate Papua New Guinean higher education-related organization, offering at least four-year undergraduate degrees (bachelor degrees) or postgraduate degrees (master or doctoral degrees) and delivering courses predominantly in a traditional, face-to-face, non-distance education format.
According to the UniRank website, it aims to provide a non-academic comparison of achievements or merits by the higher learning institutions based on valid, unbiased and non-influenceable web metrics provided by independent web intelligence sources rather than data submitted by the Universities themselves.
PNG Unitech is also ranked first in the top universities on the Facebook category on UniRank with the most likes at 12, 798 (August statistics) followed by Divine Word University (8,753), Pacific Adventist University (8,462), PNG University of Natural Resources and Environment (7,039), University of Papua New Guinea (5,458) and University of Goroka (5,061).
Source: https://www.unitech.ac.pg/
Mathematics Exam Resources Website for PNG students and teachers
An in-depth article from Dr Tapo was published on the PNG Insight parent website titled 'Thinking Strategies' Help Students Solve Problems' - read here.
Immediate challenges in educational approaches
Central to all of the approaches taken, the century-long learning phenomenon of Thinking versus Memorising of facts in the late 1960s -1980s is worth revisiting. Approaches such as:- students were routinised memorising of facts, and
- learn to remember and then display this in Grade 6, Grade 8, and Grade 10 examinations.
Problem Solving and Thinking Strategies
School education examination in Papua New Guinea (PNG) from 1975 to 2020 and beyond is all about Knowledge Gathering and Remembering and is significant and very much dependent on the quantity of teaching, quality of teaching, and teacher quality.The problem has been and continues to be so and is an urgent and acute problem associated very much to Problem Solving or best described as Thinking.
Almost all high and secondary school education in Papua New Guinea failed to focus Problem Solving Strategies. And have limited teaching and learning strategies that address the scientific approach (of teaching thinking strategies) required to solve problems. Hence, its an apparent strategy and definite means to know the facts from knowledge and skills taught and learned in primary, high and secondary examinations.
Importance of teaching the syllabus
The amount of time spent in teaching and learning mathematics, Science and Grammar is interconnected to the number of multiple practices each child assumes in class in these subjects is significant to avoiding dependency on past and recent examination papers.The current culture of schooling and learning is dependent on schools and teachers must teach children more and make them work harder to increase their information on the level of knowledge and skills planned around the subject learning being learned.
Foremost, the level of individual child intelligence and termly achievements in a subject learning area must be corrected with the facts (knowledge and skills acquisition). Students primarily learn best if they can remember these facts.
Knowledge and skills being examined
The ambiguity of language and phrases used in the past and more recent examination papers indicate the facts of knowledge and skills being examined can or could lead to confusion.Some questions can mislead students to select or choose to answer a question in future examinations because of a similar question and answer from the past examination papers and likely answer that is expected in the 2020 or 2021 examination papers.