Educational restructuring gone astray in paradise? The Papua New Guinea experience

Argues that the proposals for primary education in the latest Education Sector Review in Papua New Guinea are seriously misguided. Recommends a major overhaul of the system in order to facilitate greater pupil access to primary school yet such an aim can be achieved by taking the much less radical step of increasing the average primary school class size. The structural proposals are also made in order to facilitate the introduction of a primary school programme based on a child‐centred notion of curriculum. The review would have done better to have recommended that the present primary school educational structures be maintained, that the present subject‐based curriculum be implemented properly, that steps be taken to improve the quality of the formal style of teaching with which the majority of teachers feel most comfortable and that everything possible be done to ensure that the quality of students entering the teachers′ colleges be of the highest intellectual calibre.