Culture on the curriculum for children
Port Moresby (Papua New Guinea Post-Courier/PINA Nius Online) – The governments of Australia and Papua New Guinea gave the country’s education reform a major boost with the launch of a new project to meet the cultural and linguistic needs of children.
The curriculum reform implementation project is a five-year AusAID funded project that will help the Education Department to develop a curriculum based on culture for schools in the country.
The new project will focus on supporting basic education from elementary prep to grade eight. Apart from helping with the development of a culture- based curriculum, the project should help improve the distribution of curriculum materials to schools. The project will also help to train up to 12,000 primary school teachers to use the new curriculum materials.
Education Secretary Peter Baki said: No other nation has tried to introduce such a major education reform in so many languages and cultures. This new project will provide assistance to help meet the challenge of providing a truly national curriculum based on PNG’s needs and priorities.
AusAID’s Minister Counselor to PNG, Margaret Regnault, said Australia’s education program was structured to support PNG’s education reforms.
