THE education system of the Papua New Guinea needs to be reviewed to reflect the economic realities and capacity constraints of the country.

Although the National Plan for Education (2005-2014) clearly details the strategy for the future education system, successive short-term reviews are necessary to ensure that short-term outcomes are achieved as planned and improvise areas that need adjustments to achieve the long term objectives of the education sector.

The NEP complemented the reform as well as incorporating the international agenda on universal primary education largely driven by the United Nations under the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). The MDG (Goal 2) promotes universal primary education for all children by 2015. Yet another challenge is the question of; how can we, align our education system to the Vision 2050 and the National Development Strategy 2030?

This paper, however, argues that while having a long term Education Plan or strategy based on equity and equality in some respects, lack of proper planning to account for critical skilled labour shortage required by our economy will not leapfrog the economy forward.

One of the major problems of the Education Plan is that it did not plan for the education system to meet the labour force required by the domestic and international economies. While it is supported for universal primary education by 2015, which means that years one to eight will have compulsory free education, there are no adequate incentives and structured academic and technical institutions with tailored programs established for school leavers at secondary and tertiary level of education. What the country basically needs to do is to redesign the education system more proficiently to produce the necessary skilled labor the country needs to develop its economy and make it more competitive to other economies.

What Papua New Guinea intends to do now is to produce the mass educated populace but they won’t be suitable for productive employment in the economy. The paper also briefly highlights some of the implications of the education reform and shortcomings of the current education system in the country.

The Education Reform and Cost of Education

The Education Reform Policy, however, did not take into account the massive funding that will be required for each successive year against the future revenue stream. The policy has made major changes to the level of education such as creating elementary, primary, lower and upper secondary, and curriculum development to suit these levels of education.

The Reform did not reasonably detail the minimum cost estimation for the number of infrastructure facilities and the teaching capacity for future successive years.

As such, the cost of building new infrastructure such as classrooms, and recruitment of teachers at various levels appeared to be the biggest problems to grapple with in the last few years and even, today. The cumulative problems have been more classrooms and staff houses needed, more teachers needed especially at elementary level, inconsistent curriculum development and of course poor education outcomes.

In addition, the cost of education needs to be framed in line with the population growth or expansion and the current minimum cost of maintaining the education system or service. With the increase in population coupled with high inflation, cost of education can be high. Under the Education Reform and level of funding, future expenditures on education is likely to rise or continue to rise.

The outcomes of the education reform, according to the public criticisms as well as the parliamentarians are that the current education system is expensive; it created a hierarchical structure and is producing poor quality education. This clearly suggests that there is an urgent need to review the education reform and the current Education Plan for Future (2005-2014).

A big tradeoff on Universal Primary Education and Higher Level Education

The concentration on the universal basic and primary education has shifted the focus in terms of resource allocation away from the higher level educational institutions in the country. We have noticed that educational institutions were fast deteriorating due to lack of routine maintenance and also the existing educational institutions, particularly the universities, could not expand to accommodate the increasing school-leavers and non-school-leavers who initially met the university entry requirements. One of the fine examples is that the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) would need more than K50 million to expand its infrastructure capacity to accommodate new students.

The university has received more than 6000 eligible applicants to enroll in the various programs but due to the lack of teaching facilities and student accommodation, it could only enroll up to 4000 or less full time students.

It is believed that similar situations of lack of capacity are experienced in other tertiary institutions as well. The Government or its agency must now assess its performance in the education sector before drumming up new policies or initiatives that builds on the current education system, which is likely to create more problems.

Scholarship Schemes should link to specific Academic and Technical Education Programs

Scholarship schemes should attract academically qualified students to specific field of study that the country needs for development. The academic and technical institutions need to be redesigned or realigned to offer programs or training that targets specific skill gaps that the country needs. The problem in our education system is that scholarships are awarded to academically qualified students in any field of study which some of them may not be actively contributing towards economic development. For example, some of the degree programs offered at the universities are not directly contributing to wealth creation or having greater effects on the production of goods and services. What should be done or considered is providing scholarships to specific degree programs that will allow the scholarship beneficiaries to participate in the economy meaningfully after the graduation. This supports the acclaimed view in economic literature that having a stock of skilled labour force is necessary to increase economic output or growth.

Further, the scholarship scheme, Higher Education Graduate Scheme (HECAS) set the good framework but is broad and subjected to strong criticisms. The scheme is guided by Grade Point Average (GPA) criterion or scale which is more appropriate than the quota system but the downside is that when unlimited or large number of students has scored the minimum GPA, Government would have to secure more funds to sponsor these students. For example, this year, we have noticed that a lot of school-leavers have missed out on receiving HECAS even though they have scored the minimum required GPA.

Also those who scored the minimum required GPA could not get a placing at universities or collages because of the quota system (due to capacity constraint) in which only those who scored higher GPA were accepted into various programs including accommodation. It appears that Government need to provide more funds as well as making the schemes work more effectively.

Human Resource Planning Is Vital For Economic Progress and Development

While discussing education reforms that have both positive and negative effects, a more related issue is the human resource or manpower planning that relates to education system and the human resource development that the country requires to achieve high growth and economic development. That is, our education system must reflect the type of skilled labor force that we need to develop the country, economically.

This requires redesigning our education system to reflect the situation on the labour market. This is because effective high labour participation in the economy would result in high productivity growth and reduced unemployment. It is believed that a manpower assessment project was undertaken by the Office of Higher Education (OHE) with the support of the Department of National Planning.

The outcome of this project, if properly done, should provide the basis to develop a proper and suitable education system that targets the skills gap requirement of the country. It is expected that OHE would speed up the project and make the results available to the Department of National Planning for it to design the national manpower plan for the country.
This, however, must complement or fit into the National Vision 2050 and the National Development Strategy (2030) of the Government.

Given the different scenarios discussed above, it suggests that there is clearly a need to review the National Education Plan and the reform to account for skilled labor requirement and efficient allocation of resources.

The grave concern is that the current level of funding and institutional framework does not adequately cater for the future cost burden and skilled labor requirement in line with the growth in population in the economy. The education system need to be redesigned to reflect the skilledgaps of our labour force that economy greatly needs to compete in this competitive world.

Dr Peter Gaallah Kora, PhD
Head of economics department, University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) 

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