Higher Education Minister, Don Polye, says around 10,000 Grade 12 students out of 28,000 will not secure a place in a tertiary institution next year due to limited spaces.
That is not because you were ineligible, you are eligible, you can get into one of the institutions, but the challenge we have is very limited spaces in higher education.
Minister Polye
Polye said this when he launched the national online application system (NOAS) in Port Moresby yesterday.
This year, around 31,000 grade 12 students sat for the examinations.
According to online selection results, of 27,902 applications filed through the NOAS, only 11,126 were selected for tertiary education according to their choices.
The results indicated that 2,000 more students were selected into tertiary institutions than last year.
Department of Higher Education Research Science and Technology (DHERST) acting secretary Francis Hualupmomi said 16,777 were eligible and would be considered through the national admission pool (NAP) to fill 8,335 Government-funded spaces available in the 62 institutions.
He said school leavers had been given about three months of application period and three days of grace period to finalize their choices based on their final exam results.
Hualupmomi said during the grace period, if a student had not met the minimum requirement set by the institutions, red light would be indicated and the student had to change the red choices to a different selection that was available on their program list.
If no red lights, they do not need to change their choices.
Hualupmomi
Hualupmomi said that time was very crucial for students to understand the program requirement set by various institutions to avoid making wrong choices.
Polye said the Government was working very hard to address these limited spaces issued by creating avenues to enable students to take different pathways such as Flexible Open Distance Education (FODE) and he was now looking at creating online learning.
Polye said all children had the ability to perform, just that the students were competitive in a very limited space and some had to be left out.