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The classrooms are full, but only more and better-trained teachers will lift learning.
Solving Papua New Guinea's education crisis
Papua New Guinea (PNG) has spent three decades expanding access to schooling, accompanied by substantial growth in its teaching workforce. But expansion has outpaced the system’s capacity to ensure that enough appropriately qualified teachers are available to meet growing student demand. Enrolment across elementary, primary, and secondary schools now exceeds 2.3 million students, yet the World Bank estimates that 72 per cent of PNG’s ten-year-olds cannot read and understand an age-appropriate text. The scale of the teacher workforce challenge this presents is measurable. PNG will require between 98,000 and 124,000 teachers by 2033. Teacher-training institutions currently graduate around 2,200 teachers annually. At that rate, the workforce will not grow at all. New graduates will barely replace teachers retiring over the same period, leaving PNG well short of even the lower estimate. Annual graduate output would need to roughly triple to close that gap. PNG’s 2020 Human Capital Index (HCI) score of 0.43 means that a child born today can expect to achieve only 43 per cent of their productive potential — one of the lowest scores in the East Asia and Pacific region. This critical constraint will limit PNG’s ability to realise its vision of a diversified economy by 2050 in which it relies less on extractive industries.
To address the dual challenges of upgrading the qualifications and professional preparation of the existing workforce and building a stronger pipeline of appropriately qualified new teachers, PNG requires two simultaneous actions. First, government should establish a ten-year National Teacher Workforce Plan that aligns enrolments, the new education structural reform (1–6–6), retirements, qualification gaps, provincial demand, and training capacity. That plan should guide higher-education financing, scholarships, teacher upskilling, and development-partner support. Second, greater awareness of the government’s National Education Plan 2020–2029 and the major restructuring of the education system it entails is also needed to build shared ownership of the reform across schools, families, communities, government, and the private sector. Together, these steps offer PNG the best chance of converting access into learning.
The challenges facing PNG's education system are not confined to remote and rural communities. Wardstrip Demonstration Primary School sits in Port Moresby, within walking distance of the National Parliament and the Australian High Commission. With enrolment estimated at more than 4,000 pupils and classroom ratios reportedly reaching 80 students to one teacher, the school offers a visible illustration of the education pressures facing PNG. Its proximity to the country's highest centres of political power and international development decision-making raises a confronting question: if the problem is this visible, why does the system remain unable to solve it?
Part of the answer lies in the foundations on which it was built. PNG’s modern schooling is the product of successive policy decisions by colonial and post-Independence governments responding to the social, political, and economic pressures of their day. Over 50 years, these reforms transformed a small, selective intake at Independence into a national system serving more than 2.3 million students today.
Education remains a key development priority of the PNG government and development partners. According to the Lowy Institute’s Pacific Aid Map, between 2008 and 2024, Australia invested US$856 million into 170 education-related projects in PNG. Yet despite this substantial investment, learning outcomes remain weak. PNG’s challenge is now structural: it must shift from expanding access to delivering learning under a school system that requires far more qualified teachers.
This Policy Brief argues that the teaching workforce is one of the principal constraints on that transition. It focuses on two dimensions of the challenge, namely the quality of the existing workforce and the supply of the future one.
PNG’s first schools were established in the 1870s by missionaries whose local workers were termed teachers. The British administration in New Guinea — renamed Papua after its 1906 transfer to Australia — encouraged these schools as part of its policy of “pacifying the natives”. After the Second World War, Australia adopted an explicit development agenda for the territory, including universal primary education. With too few trained teachers locally, the Emergency Teacher Training Scheme was introduced in 1960, deploying teachers to primary schools across the territory.
PNG therefore entered Independence with an emerging education system and a limited domestic skills base. Schooling remained selective — organised around community schools, provincial high schools, and national high schools, with examinations restricting progression.
By the early 1990s, the policy challenge had shifted. The system had grown, but many children still could not progress through it, in part because rural areas had too few community schools. Guided by the Matane Report, the Education Act of 1995 introduced elementary schools and restructured the system into three years of elementary education, six years of primary, and four years of secondary (3–6–4). Elementary teachers were recruited from their own communities and trained in a field-based, mixed-mode program leading to a Certificate in Elementary Teaching (CET) from the PNG Education Institute. This allowed PNG to rapidly develop a locally based teaching workforce, but it did so without requiring the same level of formal academic preparation expected of conventionally trained primary teachers.
The introduction of Outcomes Based Education (OBE) in 2000 placed new demands on this expanding workforce. Teachers were expected to facilitate student-led inquiry rather than rely primarily on direct instruction. For community-based teachers recruited without Grade 12 or higher education and with limited training, this was an unrealistic expectation. By 2012, opposition to OBE had become sufficiently significant that its abolition formed part of the People’s National Congress (PNC) election platform.
In 2012, the O’Neill government introduced Tuition Fee-Free (TFF) education. School enrolment increased from around 1.6 million students in 2011 to 2.3 million by 2018. TFF was initially highly centralised, with subsidies administered nationally and paid directly to schools, bypassing subnational governments. Over time, however, education financing and administration became increasingly decentralised through growing district-level funding and, eventually, the transfer of some TFF management functions to provinces.
This decentralisation increased exposure to political influence and weakened accountability. Salary allocations also rose over this period, and the total teaching workforce doubled from 32,000 in 2010 to 66,789 in 2017.
The cumulative effect of these reforms was a fundamentally larger education system, as shown in Table 1.
| Year | Number of schools | Number of students | Number of teachers |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1975 | 1,952 | 278,611 | 9,841 |
| 2000 | 6,330 | 856,481 | 27,431 |
| 2015 | 11,907 | 2,053,197 | 53,620 |
| 2024 | 14,089 | 2,319,486 | 60,700 |
The Pacific Islands Literacy and Numeracy Assessment (PILNA), one of the most comprehensive measures of learning in PNG, confirms the scale of the problem. Its 2023 results (Table 2) show that the shortfall begins early, with only 45 per cent of Grade 3 students meeting minimum regional standards in reading.
| Subject | Male | Female | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 3 reading | 43% | 47% | 45% |
| Grade 5 reading | 62% | 69% | 66% |
| Grade 3 numeracy | 73% | 74% | 73% |
| Grade 5 numeracy | 77% | 77% | 77% |
Despite being the Pacific’s largest economy, PNG records higher estimated learning poverty than comparable Pacific Island countries, as shown in Figure 1. Learning poverty measures the share of children who cannot read and understand a simple text by age ten — counting both those out of school and those in school who have not achieved minimum reading proficiency.
The other key challenge facing the education system is how sharply enrolment falls across grade levels. In 2021, approximately 348,500 students were enrolled at the elementary prep level, compared with only 30,100 in Grade 12, as Figure 2 shows.
The pattern is one of progressive decline rather than a single structural bottleneck: enrolment thins at every level instead of collapsing at one exam or transition point. The steepest falls come early, between the elementary and primary levels.
Research increasingly shows that foundational literacy is a critical predictor of retention and progression through the education system. Students who fail to acquire basic reading skills in the early grades are significantly less likely to engage successfully with later learning, increasing their risk of repetition, disengagement, and eventual dropout.
The government is well aware of the challenges confronting the system. Under the National Education Plan 2020–2029, another big set of reforms is underway. The first is the transition from the previous 3–6–4 structure to a 1–6–6 system, comprising one preparatory year, six years of primary education, and six years of secondary, as illustrated in Figure 3.
Phasing out the existing elementary structure will affect some 8,000 elementary schools and 15,000 teachers. It is not yet clear whether these schools will become early childhood centres or primary schools.
The plan also abolishes the Grade 8 and 10 national exams to ensure that students complete 13 years of education without exams determining their progression through the system. It is the government’s plan to increase net enrolment in secondary education to 60 per cent by 2029. However, according to the 2022 Socio-Demographic and Economic Survey (SDES), 20 per cent of lower-secondary-aged children (aged 13 to 16) and 33 per cent of upper-secondary-aged children (aged 17 to 18) are not attending school.
The government’s goal of greater completion rates will push more students through an already overcrowded system. Beyond new school infrastructure, PNG must address both issues identified in this Brief — the quality of the current teaching workforce and the supply of future teachers — simultaneously if this ambitious but necessary reform is to succeed.
International evidence consistently identifies teacher quality as one of the most important school-based determinants of student learning. Yet the workforce tasked with delivering the reform has a substantial qualifications gap: 74.9 per cent of PNG’s 15,000 elementary teachers have Grade 10 as their highest qualification. None can move to primary school teaching without upgrading to at least a Diploma in Education. The National Education Plan sets out a pathway for them, shown in Figure 4.
The government should invest in Flexible Open and Distance Education (FODE) to help upgrade the current elementary teacher workforce. FODE is an alternative pathway within PNG's national education system, allowing students to complete Grades 7–12 outside the conventional school environment — and offering teachers with only Grade 10 qualifications the same route to finishing their own secondary education. Students follow the national curriculum, complete assignments, and sit the equivalent of formal national school examinations. FODE is delivered through two mechanisms. The first is government-operated centres established by the Department of Education and provincial administrations, which have struggled with weak coordination, delayed materials, limited student support, inadequate infrastructure, and shortages of qualified teaching staff.
The second is Registered Study Centres, which can be operated by churches, missions, community organisations, NGOs, and other approved providers. The Kokoda Track Foundation currently operates 24 registered FODE centres across six provinces. Its model offers flexible learning with full-time teachers, wrap-around student support, outreach patrols, digital tablets with offline content, solar-powered infrastructure, and active community engagement. A recent study found that this level of support directly improved student participation and retention.
PNG's Infrastructure Tax Credit Scheme allows eligible resource companies to fund approved public infrastructure in exchange for credits. Companies such as Ok Tedi, Barrick, Newcrest, and ExxonMobil have supported the construction of classrooms and teacher housing, school upgrades, and training facilities. Ok Tedi has invested in expanding FODE through satellite study centres and tutors in remote communities. Digicel Foundation has worked directly with FODE to produce and broadcast science and mathematics lessons on Digicel TV.
As PNG’s private sector grows, so will the scope for government, business, and civil society to partner on expanding FODE delivery.
The PNG government has already raised the academic standard for entry into teacher training. Applicants must now complete Grade 12 with a minimum GPA of 2.8 and a B grade in English and mathematics. The higher threshold is an important quality measure, but it constrains supply: in 2023, only 1,318 students were selected against 1,870 available places in teacher-training institutions. Failure to meet the eligibility and GPA requirements may be one reason those places went unfilled.
PNG needs to increase the number of capable students who aspire to teach. That means competing deliberately for academically strong Grade 12 graduates — with clear career progression, active promotion of teaching as a high-status profession, targeted scholarships and student financing, and remuneration that rewards qualifications, experience, and responsibility. Current salary ranges are as follows:
The salary levels for primary and secondary teachers are particularly attractive when combined with other allowances and benefits given that PNG’s GDP per capita is US$2,994. The government has proposed recruiting graduates from universities with specialist disciplines, including mathematics, science, engineering, commerce, agriculture, and technical and vocational education and training, which could broaden the pool of higher-qualified entrants into the profession.
The urgency of this task is sharpened by the age profile of the existing workforce. The Teaching Service Commission has estimated that more than 20,000 teachers are approaching retirement in the coming years. This presents not only a workforce risk but a generational opportunity to build a new pipeline of qualified teachers.
Government expenditure on education has risen steadily since 2020. The 2026 National Budget allocates K4.935 billion to education, an increase of 11.3 per cent from 2025 and equivalent to 16.3 per cent of total government expenditure. This continues the upward trend shown in Figure 5.
In February 2026, Cabinet approved a K11 billion education reform and funding framework running to 2035. Prime Minister James Marape has tied the investment to delivering the 1–6–6 structure: removing push-out points, creating sufficient places for children to progress to Grade 12, upgrading school facilities and curricula, and ensuring teachers are available at every level. The framework also targets the profession itself: upgrading teachers to degree-level qualifications, tying salary increases to higher qualifications, and recruiting university graduates and degree holders in specialist fields into schools.
Teachers’ salaries have gradually risen since the introduction of Tuition Fee-Free Education in 2012, as Figure 6 shows.
PNG is also increasingly drawing on concessional development finance to invest in education. In 2025, the government secured US$100 million from the World Bank’s International Development Association for the Learning Enhancement and Access Project (LEAP), complemented by a US$10 million contribution from Australia. One of the largest education investments in PNG’s history, LEAP is expected to reach more than 375,000 children across 3,500 schools and support 9,000 teachers. More than US$80 million of the funding is directed towards teaching quality: structured lesson plans, continuous teacher training, and pathways for teachers to upgrade to diploma-level qualifications.
The PNG Sustainable Development Program (PNG SDP) is a distinctively local form of long-term development financing. Its independently managed Long-Term Fund, built from Ok Tedi mine revenues to preserve a share of the country’s resource wealth for future development, is now worth more than US$1.7 billion. Today, PNG SDP remains one of the country’s largest development institutions, investing in education, health, and economic development, particularly in Western Province. Through partnerships with the Kokoda Track Foundation, Western Sydney University, and Divine Word University, Balimo College provides an integrated pathway from FODE into teacher training and nursing education. By training Western Province students for professions the province cannot fill, the model ties education financing directly to local labour demand.
Government investment in tertiary education has also grown through the Higher Education Loan Program (HELP), which operates alongside the existing Tertiary Education Student Assistance Scheme (TESAS). While TESAS provides merit-based government scholarships to eligible students, HELP provides repayable loans to students to meet the cost of tertiary education.
Established in 2019 and administered since 2020 by the Department of Higher Education, Science Research and Technology (DHERST), the program disbursed more than K177 million over its first four years. Figure 7 shows the distribution of the 36,020 students who benefited from these loans, by institution type.
Half of the beneficiaries attended universities, while 31 per cent attended business, technical, and private colleges. Only 18 per cent — 6,477 students — attended teacher and nursing colleges. HELP has expanded access to higher education, but in a labour market where formal employment remains limited, public financing of tertiary education should also be more deliberately connected to workforce demand.
PNG’s economic structure reinforces this need. In 2022, mining and petroleum generated 27 per cent of real GDP but employed only 6 per cent of the workforce, while agriculture generated 16 per cent of GDP but accounted for almost a quarter of employment. This disconnect between where value is generated and where Papua New Guineans work highlights the limits of resource-led growth for broad-based employment. Higher-education financing therefore needs to do more than expand access to qualifications; it needs targeted investments to address the country’s critical skills shortages in key sectors.
Teaching is one area of demonstrated workforce demand. Yet this shortage sits alongside substantial government investment in fully funded overseas STEM scholarships. Since 2023, more than 360 students have been sent to the United States, China, and India, with government covering tuition, travel, and support costs to study artificial intelligence, biotechnology, agricultural science, aerospace engineering, data science,and other specialised disciplines. This has continued even as the kina has depreciated, pushing up the domestic cost of overseas education. Investment in advanced STEM skills is important, but PNG must also address its immediate workforce needs, particularly in education.
Australia provides a useful comparison. Despite having a highly skilled economy and a much more developed education system, it has treated teacher shortages as a national workforce problem requiring direct financial intervention. Education is placed in the lowest student-contribution band under the Commonwealth higher education funding system. In 2026, the maximum annual student contribution for education is AU$4,738, compared with AU$17,399 for fields including law, economics, commerce, and communications. This is supplemented by Commonwealth Teaching Scholarships worth up to AU$40,000 for undergraduate students and AU$20,000 for postgraduate students who commit to teaching in government schools or government-run early learning settings.
The comparison raises an important question for PNG. If a high-income country such as Australia considers its teacher shortage serious enough to reduce the private cost of teacher education, provide substantial scholarships, and support students during professional placements, PNG’s considerably more acute workforce challenge warrants at least the same policy urgency.
The scale of investment now flowing into education reinforces the central argument of this Brief. The challenge is to align domestic expenditure, concessional finance, and development assistance around the structural constraints preventing that investment from translating into better learning outcomes. Strengthening the teaching workforce should anchor that alignment.
One of the clearest examples of what such investment can achieve lies far from Port Moresby, in the mountains of Oksapmin, West Sepik Province. In 2007, after four decades working in PNG, New Zealand-born educator Glenda Giles accepted an invitation from the Oksapmin community to establish a high school at Tekin. The school began with limited infrastructure in one of the country’s most isolated communities, yet went on to produce some of PNG’s strongest academic results, ranking first nationally for Grade 10 in 2019.
Roads, telecommunications, and other physical infrastructure lay the foundations for economic growth, but only a population with the knowledge and skills to use them will realise that potential. That requires a fundamental shift in how the teaching profession is valued. Teaching must compete for talented graduates, offering the incentives, status, and career pathways to draw them into serving the population.
More broadly, it requires a shift in how education is owned and financed across PNG. With greater shared responsibility among government, families, communities, churches, the private sector, and development partners, PNG can build a system that delivers on the promise of education for the next generation.
The National Department of Education, DHERST, and the Teaching Service Commission should jointly develop a ten-year National Teacher Workforce Plan forecasting teacher demand by province, education level, and subject area. The plan should guide teacher training, upgrading, recruitment, scholarships, and financing, and provide a framework for aligning development partners and private-sector investment.
Government should honour its commitment to fully fund tuition for students entering teacher education who meet the academic requirements, prioritising funding according to identified workforce shortages. HELP and other higher-education financing should provide additional support where required. Development partners should align domestic and international scholarships with PNG’s teacher-workforce priorities. Scholarships targeting areas of acute shortage should include return-of-service requirements.
Government should substantially increase funding for FODE, including its online capability and physical network, to support the upgrading of the existing teaching workforce. Infrastructure tax-credit arrangements and partnerships with major rural employers should be used to establish and strengthen FODE centres in underserved communities.
Government, schools, and teacher-training institutions should actively promote teaching as a career for high-performing students through scholarships, clear career pathways, and remuneration that rewards qualifications and experience. The Teaching Service Commission should improve teacher registration, appointment, and payroll administration to remove barriers to entering and remaining in the profession.
This research was supported through a grant from the Foundation for Development Cooperation.
The author thanks all those who generously gave their time for interviews and consultations, as well as the peer reviewers for their valuable feedback. Appreciation is also extended to the Foundation for Development Cooperation (FDC), and others whose support made the FDC Pacific Research Fellowship possible. Finally, the author thanks Ian Bruce, Clare Caldwell, Oliver Nobetau, and Mihai Sora of the Lowy Institute for their invaluable contributions to the paper.
About the author
Serena Sasingian
Serena Sasingian was the 2025 FDC Pacific Research Fellow at the Lowy Institute, with more than 15 years of experience in development and public policy across government, private, and non-profit sectors.
