Extreme Makeover - PNG Edition

[Tree]

Posted at 06:39 on 13 December, 2012 UTC

The head of Papua New Guinea’s Institute of National Affairs says the decision to assign

Australian advisers to each of PNG’s 89 districts requires extensive planning if it’s to help build local capacity.

The advisers are to assist district administrators in service delivery in sectors such as health and education as well as law and order.

Paul Barker says it’s difficult to know where the advisers will be sourced from.

“Unless you’re paying either a considerable amount of money or more realistically, you’re trying to get some volunteers into the field and certainly there would be a good case for ramping up the Australian and other volunteer programmes to assist at the local level. But if you’re going to do that, you can’t really do that in a high-speed, ramped up programme.”

Paul Barker says given the weakness of capacity at the local level in PNG, there needs to be longterm planning for local people rather than foreigners to assume the management of service delivery.

[Tree]

And from MrObvious.com.......

Posted at 23:39 on 12 December, 2012 UTC
An academic at Papua New Guinea’s National Research Institute says there is a need for changes to the education curriculum particularly at the elementary level, where many children fail to learn to read and write.
Dr Arnold Kukari was commenting after the acting Education Minister James Marape gave officials till early next year to develop a new framework for a curriculum that is relevant to Papua New Guineans.
Dr Kukari says the planned objectives based system would not produce different results from the current outcomes based curriculum.
But he says faults are apparent at the elementary level and changes, including improved teacher training, are needed.
“We need to have a look at the way teachers are educated and trained to teach at the foundational level, which is the elementary level, and provide full time training for elementary teachers with appropriate teaching pedagogy and content knowledge, particularly now that the system is moving towards introducing phonics at the elementary level.”