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The Australian Development Gateway (ADG) strives to support members of the development community in their efforts to reduce poverty and enhance sustainable development in the Asia Pacific region. The site has been created with participation from members of government, private, academia and non-government organisations. User feedback mechanisms have been incorporated to guide future directions of the site. The site is optimised for low bandwidth access to enable the widest participation throughout the Asia Pacific region.

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Reform issues

Project performance evaluation report for Papua New Guinea (pdf 1.52mb)

During the early 1990s, the critical shortage of professional human resources was identified as a major constraint on the development of Papua New Guinea (PNG). The Government introduced reforms to rationalise the primary and secondary school system. Based on its National Higher Education Plan I (NHEP-I, 1990), the Government also intended to rationalise higher education by improving teacher education and, thus, the quality of school education. At the request of the Government, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) provided an advisory technical assistance (TA) in conjunction with the Project.

This document is an ADB evaluation of the project. It highlights inefficiencies, problems, outcomes and future plans for the next phase of the project. Four key needs emerged from the evaluation: (i) to rationalize the entire education system to improve the links between the higher education and school education subsystems and increase the private sector's role, (ii) to improve the selection criteria of the higher education scholarship scheme to be more pro-poor, (iii) to increase transparency and accountability in the selection procedure of the scholarship scheme, and (iv) to increase efficiency in the use of expatriate lecturers.

The following are some key lessons derived from the evaluation:

(i) To avoid piecemeal results in the sector, policy dialogue should be conducted with concerned funding agencies during project formulation.
(ii) To increase the relevance of future project designs, each project needs a preparatory TA to carry out detailed sector analysis and needs assessment.

 

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