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Formal education in Papua New Guinea is of relatively recent origin. Literacy and numeracy programs were first offered to adults in the 1890s in schools established by missionaries to facilitate evangelization. The British administration, at the time, encouraged the establishment of such schools to assist with its policy of ‘pacifying the natives’.
By the 1920s there was some concern by the administration with benefiting the natives, rather than white settlers, and emphasis was placed on the transformation of ‘the tribe of disappointed warriors into a race of more or less industrious workmen’ (Murray 1929, 8). By 1926, technical, industrial and agriculture training in Papua received 95 per cent of the total government education budget. By the 1930s, government policy was more concerned with a blending of cultures in which the best of the old culture was ‘vastly enriched and enlarged by contributions from our own’ (Williams 1935, 6).
A further shift in education policy took place immediately after the Second World War with greater government involvement in the provision of primary schools. Paul Hasluck, the Australian minister for Territories who then had responsibility for Papua and New Guinea, established a set of definitive policy statements for education (Hasluck 1959). These policies stated that universal primary education would be the focus; all children in controlled areas would be taught in English; church schools would be encouraged and a system of grants established to support these schools; attention would be given to developing local teachers; and manual training would be developed at primary schools. Secondary education was not given any priority and high schools were not introduced on a widespread basis until the 1960s.
Hasluck was criticized for his gradualist policies and not identifying an indigenous elite for future leadership roles. The United Nations (1962) and World Bank (1964) reports insisted that secondary schools be expanded and that planning for a university start immediately to satisfy the impending human resource needs of the country. The University of Papua New Guinea commenced operations in 1966.
Education, prior to independence, was for the few and it was gender specific. The curriculum was academic and strongly oriented to Western forms of knowledge as part of the modernist project for Papua New Guinea. Teaching and learning was carried out in English and the majority of teachers were from overseas; they used Queensland or New South Wales curricula. Teachers were encouraged to adapt the curriculum to the contexts of Papua New Guinea, but few teachers took up the opportunity. The country fell far short of universal primary education despite continuous government rhetoric about attaining universal primary education, embodied in a 1960 government directive and subsequently revised to 1973 (Roscoe 1958).