17 June 2016: A Pacific Community education benchmarking project has reported on its pilot phase conducted in three countries: Papua New Guinea (PNG), Samoa and Solomon Islands. The Pacific Benchmarking for Education Results (PaBER) pilot project was conducted by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), with support from the Australian Government, from July 2012 to March 2016, to provide a baseline to monitor the three countries’ educational systems’ performance and learning outcomes, with a view to improving the quality of school education in the Pacific.

The pilot project investigated five education policy areas: teacher quality, assessment systems, curriculum and materials, school governance and management, and education and management information systems. A series of reports on the findings and recommendations will be available in July 2016.

A workshop to discuss the findings took place in Nadi, Fiji, on 17 June 2016. At the workshop, Eliakim Apelis, PNG Department of Education, said the pilot had assisted PNG to review and audit all its education policies to assess their relevance and their consistency with other government policies, including the PNG Vision 2050.

The Pacific Forum Education Ministers Meeting endorsed the PaBER initiative in October 2010. Other projects under the SCP’s Educational Quality and Assessment Programme (EQAP) include the New Zealand-supported Pacific Islands Literacy and Numeracy Assessment, and the Pacific Register of Qualifications and Standards. [SPC Press Release] [EQAP Website]