Policy formulation is best understood by reviewing a number of key documents that established the policy framework for education since independence. Six fundamental issues have consistently underpinned the formulation and implementation of education policy during this time, namely: universal primary education; the nature of the curriculum; language of instruction; financing education; decentralization; and development partners.
The granting of independence was an appropriate occasion to make a substantial break from the past. Alkan Tololo, a Papua New Guinean, chaired a committee (Tololo Committee 1974) that was given the task of reviewing the first five-year education plan from 1969–1973, and to set the parameters for the important education plan for the period 1976–1980. The committee consisted of only Papua New Guineans and outlined several radical policies for education in an independent Papua New Guinea:
self-reliance as the cornerstone of policy achieved through a community-based education program;
forms 1 and 2 from high school to be transferred to community schools as Grades 7 and 8, to speed up the process of universal community education;
teaching for the first three Grades to be in the ‘functional language of the community’;
opportunities for education to be expanded to all Papua New Guineans including girls, children from isolated areas, and disadvantaged children; and
curricula that ‘is relevant to the life that students will have to live after school’.
The Committee’s recommendations were not adopted. Despite the advent of independence in 1975, the education plan that was formally adopted in 1976 reconfirmed the policy laid down by Hasluck in 1959.
The Education Plan (1976–1980) set the direction for education immediately after independence. Policy formulation, curriculum design, inspections and standards, employment of teachers, and pre-service and in-service training for teachers clearly remained the responsibility of the Department of Education. Provinces were responsible for community schools, vocational centres and provincial high schools, and the implementation of policies.
There was some recognition within the Education Plan of the need to expand opportunities, which was done by constructing additional community schools and provincial high schools. Nonetheless, gross enrolment rates show that just 56.6 per cent of the 7–12 year age group was enrolled in Grades 1–6 and just 15.9 per cent of the 13 year age group enrolled in Grade 7 in 1977 (Department of Education 1977).
Significant debates developed at this time as to the relevance of education in Papua New Guinea. The Waigani Seminar report (Brammall and May 1975) presents a range of responses available to education. There is evidence of some innovation at the time, which hinted at the realization that alternative policies were needed. The Secondary Schools Community Extension Project (SSCEP) was introduced in 1978, which connected Grade 10 graduates with a more realistic understanding of the life chances that would be experienced by the majority of those returning to rural environments.
Research at the time indicated that academic results were maintained at the SSCEP schools, and students found employment, or further training, that would not have been available if they had left school at Grade 8 (Crossley and Vulliamey 1986). However, parents rejected this approach, because of the commonly held view that education was an investment in their children, and the return was the securing of formal employment in urban areas and a fortnightly pay cheque. SSCEP was withdrawn from schools as an alternative curriculum model to the academic model by 1986.
The National Education Strategy (NES) was formulated in 1978. A committee, chaired by Professor Cyril Rogers of the University of Papua New Guinea, with a mixture of national and expatriate educators, laid the groundwork for the second education plan from 1980–1984. The report provides valuable understanding of the policy framework for education through to the 1990s. Some of its major policy recommendations were:
English to be the official language of instruction;
existing general aims of community-based education to continue, but the curriculum systematically tilted in the direction of greater competency in basic subjects such as language, numbers, science, and the social sciences;
30 per cent progression of students from Grade 6 to Grade 7; and
nationally administered examinations to select students for progression to high school.
The NES revisited the goal of universal primary education and optimistically stated that ‘the earliest target for universal first level education was 1990... the Committee feels it to be realistic’ (IASER 1979, 25).
There was growth in numbers, but the goal of universal primary education was still a long way off. That goal was further compounded by poor participation and retention of males and females in schools. This had been a long-term issue for Papua New Guinea. Some 35 per cent of children in each cohort eligible to enrol in school were unable to do so because schools were not available, the cost of education was too high, or there was little encouragement from (some) parents to participate in schooling. Many of those children who did start school had left by Grade 2 and many others left school at the end of Grade 6 because there were no places available for them in the high schools. Less than 1 per cent of children who enrolled in Grade 1 went on to complete Grade 12 at school by the end of the 1980s.
The influential Ministerial Committee Report on a Philosophy of Education (Department of Education 1986) proposed a radical philosophy of education based on a notion of ‘integral human development’. The Report, better known as the ‘Matane Report’, was officially adopted by the government of the day and states:
This philosophy is for every person to be dynamically involved in the process of freeing himself or herself from every form of domination and oppression so that each individual will have the opportunity to develop as an integrated person in relationship to others. This means that education must aim for integrating and maximising: socialisation, participation, liberation, equality (Department of Education 1986, 6).
The report was particularly concerned at the loss of relevance of education for the majority of students, and the lack of early childhood education opportunities; it urged that the language of instruction be in the language spoken by the child — that is, one of the over 800 languages that exist in Papua New Guinea. This last point was a daunting challenge, but it was underpinned by a strong maintenance approach to Papua New Guinea cultures and ‘ways of doing things’. The report was not fully appreciated at the time of its release, but it forms an important prologue for much of the policy documentation and literature on education in Papua New Guinea today.
Papua New Guinea was a signatory to the 1990 Jomtien Agreement that endorsed the policy of Education for All (UNESCO 1990). This policy was in effect a continuation of the goal of universal primary education advocated by Papua New Guinea education authorities since the 1950s. The issues and the strategies, which arose from Jomtien, were already evident in the minds of senior educators.
Human resource development has been a high policy priority area of past and present governments in Papua New Guinea. In 1991, consistent with this priority, the government of the time commissioned an education sector review to be carried out by a task force of national and expatriate educators and community representatives. It was to identify, document and develop policies and strategies to rectify problems that had become endemic in the education system during the fifteen years since independence.
The Education Sector Review (Department of Education 1991) confirmed: inordinately high rates of attrition at the primary level, pointing out that universal primary education was unlikely to be achieved in the then policy climate; low transition rates at the post Grade 6 and Grade 10 levels; a largely irrelevant curriculum; weak education management and administration; declining resource allocations combined with high unit costs; and a severe imbalance in the allocation of funding to higher education at the expense of other sectors of education.
The Sector Review suggested that to do more of the same was unlikely to have significant effects and was prohibitively expensive. The review raised the issue of universal primary education and pronounced ‘that by 1999 all citizens reaching school age will have the opportunity to obtain at least six years of basic education’ (Department of Education 1991, 5).
The sector review ushered in radical policy renewal in education in Papua New Guinea. The reforms advocated at the time of independence by the Tololo Committee, and reinforced in the Matane Report, were finally taken up officially some twenty years after their conception.