Comments

My earlier comments appear to have been lost in a system failure. I will therefore attempt to reconstruct the main points I made again. The first point is that a great deal is expected of examinations and tests. They generally serve a number of different decision-making purposes such as gathering data for curriculum planning, guidance, monitoring learning, selection, and certification. Increasingly, a key expectation seems to be managerial, as this Blog demonstrates. Terms like accountability, transparency, benchmarking and performance monitoring often dominate discussions at the expense of a key purpose which is to support student learning through constructive feedback. The managerial approach also tends to import a punitive attitude of fault-finding and apportioning “blame” rather than exploring reasons for success. When one examination is used for multiple purposes it is often the case that it achieves none as well as a single-purpose approach. Second, it is wrong to equate national exams with assessment tools such as NAPLAN. National examinations will normally focus on assessing student learning in all areas of the curriculum whereas literacy and numeracy tests have a limited focus on these two dimensions only, as important as they may be. Where high stakes tests like NAPLAN are introduced it is not unusual to find a narrowing of emphasis on literacy and numeracy at the expense of other curriculum areas. Third, there is enormous risk in assuming that ideas about teaching, learning, and assessment can be imported successfully from western nations into different cultures and contexts such as those in PNG. Gerard Guthrie’s book, <em>The Progressive Education Fallacy in Developing Countries</em>, which is largely based on his work in PNG, should be mandatory reading for anyone undertaking development work in education. In particular, NAPLAN has raised many questions about its overall education benefit in Australia. It may well prove to be a disastrous model in PNG. It is a form of high stakes testing. I have already written about this matter in two <a href="https://devpolicy.org/caution-using-high-stakes-testing-of-student-learning-in-development-20121025/" rel="nofollow">Devpolicy</a> <a href="https://devpolicy.org/a-wicked-problem-using-high-stakes-testing-of-student-learning-in-development-part-2-20130506/" rel="nofollow">Blogs</a> and made this observation in the first: “The more we use high-stakes tests to assess students, teachers, schools and systems, the corruptions and distortions that inevitably appear compromise the construct validity of the test and make scores uninterpretable. It is not difficult to imagine the flow-on effects of high stakes testing in developing countries already fighting the scourge of corruption in their education systems. The <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/caie20/19/1#.VpxPkfl97cs" rel="nofollow">Special Issue</a> of the journal <em>Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy and Practice</em>, Volume 19, Number 1, 2012 contains a review of the consequences of high stakes testing in developing countries as well as in Australia.”

Thanks for this post which I found thought-provoking on a number of levels. It raises a number of questions, two of which I would like to put forward here. First, can you provide more information about why DSIP/DDA spending is considered to be more prone to politicisation than provincial or national spending because on first reading that seems somewhat counterintuitive. Secondly, to what extent, if at all, will pre-positioning for the 2017 elections mitigate the risks you've identified as MPs seek to shore up and extend their support bases if they are seeking re-election?

If the Kiribati land purchase in Fiji was not a sensible thing to do, what may be another more sensible strategy for Kiribati? People can work around these challenges. My question is what will you do to help Kiribati?

Thank you Joe. Yes, this year will bring with it its own challenges. We can only hope the country work more towards finding the right solutions.

Thanks for this excellent country-wide analysis - it is exactly the type of information needed to inform good policy responses to the drought. Australian NGOs should now do more to raise awareness of the issue. The more detailed brief was also excellent. It also included some possible budgetary implications. Using the figures in the brief, it appears that the possible costs of a relief package were estimated at about K1.75 per person per day for food (460g of rice and tuna), and around an average of K9.20 air freight costs per person per day for moving this food to the required remote locations (this figure for in-country transport costs to remote locations is consistent with costs we used when I headed AusAID's humanitarian program area that delivered food around the world, although less than the helicopter based costs in the early days responding to the East Timor crisis). For 120 days for the 6 LLGs with a population of 116,000 you mentioned in the brief, the food cost would be K24m. The freight costs could well be another K128m. Three implications. First, allowing up to K2m per district from DSIP funds is clearly inadequate for those areas most affected - especially as the most affected LLGs are often in the same district. This is a national problem and a nation program should be the response. Second, drought relief is very expensive. Current national allocations (K25m) will not come close to meeting likely costs. Finally, and this is the really difficult public policy issue for PNG, given expenditure constraints, how much should be allocated to dealing with this human catastrophe relative to other challenges facing PNG (for example, funding disease resistant TB)?

Bal excellent summary of what has happened previous years til last year. There are alot of outstanding issues that you’ve highlighted that need to be resolved.However, your summary has reflected that those issues are not solved properly. My fear is that there will be more coming this year though the Government may think the country may go smoothly. Thank you Bal for your highlighting. Great article to start the year.

Thank you Tess for pointing that out. The article is now updated. Regards

Thanks for this Bal it is a great summary of what we can expect for PNG this year and has certainly helped me get some key issues clear in my mind. One small correction regarding the Vanuatu case you referred to. The number of MPs imprisonedin November was 14 (15 convicted) which constituted half of the government but not half of the parliament which numbers 52

Thank you for this review. To clarify, then: As I believe I told in the book I had never planned to go to PNG, preparing for a more expected placing in Indonesia, until AVA offered me the PNG job, in late 1991, giving me a week to think about it. That was when I approached anyone I could find to tell give me background; that would have been when I met Elizabeth. I had never intended or wanted to write a memoir at that point; I would have hoped for some inspiration for new fiction. The part Cleo quotes in her comment, written when the process was fresh, reflects the move to writing the book I had not at first wanted to write.

Great article! Can someone with a lot of money build seawalls around those Islands to save the erosion of the shorelines. As much as we blame the climate change, one other thing that may contributed to the rise in sea level during high tides are the countless submerged debris, those man made Islands and ocean oil refineries to name a few. As far as the land purchase and all that. I for one don't really care about the land or money that involve in all these. There's something even greater then the two above our GOD given LOVE for one another as Pacific Islanders.

Many thanks Robin. I'll be very interested to read the essay in Meanjin, and will add it to the notes at the end of my post.

Many thanks for your comment Elizabeth. Your interaction with Inez Baranay was different then I think to her recollection in the third paragraph of the first page of the book, in which she says: "Two or three months ago I had never given Papua New Guinea a second thought. I had applied to AVA for several reasons which kept rearranging themselves in different patterns of priority. Eventually AVA offered me this job. Eventually I said yes." As to her desire to write about the experience, she says in the Afterword that her publisher put the idea to her and at first she only promised to think about it. (p.203) I understood this as happening after she had been in PNG, but perhaps it was before? In re-reading this section of the book again, I think she makes a very insightful comment about her volunteering experience and why she did end up writing the book, when she says: "The process of writing it made it possible for me to put a structure, a shape, story, a kind of meaning, to what seemed like a strange mess of experience all happening simultaneously. Having written it, I could clear my desk and move on."