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From E. John Blunt on Lessons from PNG’s budget trends over the last decade
The major facility and expenditure tracking survey which the NRI and ANU are currently undertaking as part of the Promoting Effective Public Expenditure project is an important mechanism that should help shed light on what impacts increased expenditures have had on the ground.
It is hoped that the survey will also consider the effectiveness of the Government's public procurement system as the means of delivering expenditure. In PNG significant effort has been invested in evolving a public procurement system that should be open, transparent, free from corruption and delivers value for money. If the public procurement system is efficient and effective, chances are that increased expenditure will be making a significant impact. If not, ...
From Pacific Watcher on AusAID’s country strategies: why such a modest improvement since 2009?
I fully support the views of the performance in the Pacific in terms of development strategy. Pacific island countries are innovating in a number of development areas now - undertaking peer reviews of their national development plans and frameworks, integrating development and development partners into their national strategies, and generally taking the lead on their own development agenda. Australia has fully supported this, and many of these things were initiated by the Cairns Compact. The Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat has worked hard to make this happen - the peer reviews and MDG monitoring is among the most important development work done in the region, and they do it well.
Other countries, and other donors, could learn from the Pacific example.
From Señor H on Pacific Buzz (October 31): Australia Security Council bid – Pacific implications | Election fever | Pacific migration research | More
Interesting reading about Tonga!
From sean on Two cheers for New Zealand aid transparency
Hi Terence. I'm not sure if Jo or yourself have seen this but it might be interesting given the above experience:
http://igps.victoria.ac.nz/publications/publications/show/214
From Peter NUMU on Rebuilding the University of Papua New Guinea
As a new incoming 2013 Students Representative Council (SRC) President and one of the senior students I totally agree with all the points and recommendations made by Scott MacWilliam about University of Papua New Guinea. I've been studying at UPNG for 6 years; completed my BA (Political Science) in 2008 and am now in my third year of a Law degree. Whatever MacWilliam mentioned about UPNG is true to the best of my knowledge.
There is a great need for bringing UPNG to a next level to meet the international standards and become competitive in the region. Right now, we are no way near to the international standard.... Our only hope is God who will one day make it become possible.
Our Government needs to seriously look into it, and the UPNG Administration needs to manage funds properly and extend their arms outside to bring funds in to develop this institution. Donor Agencies such as AusAID, NZAID, etc are willing to help but its just that we need to seek rather than wait.
From Robert Cannon on The progressive education fallacy in developing countries, by Gerard Guthrie: a review
This discussion is getting really interesting!
Dan, your comment draws attention to what I think is a major issue, which is the alarming trend towards the “homogenization” of education systems around the world. Countries like the US and Australia, among others, seem to be headed down a path of unrelenting attention to matters such as structural knowledge and technical skills reflected in demands for more standardized testing of literacy, numeracy and science, more control through setting minimum “standards”, rankings, and more accountability. Others, including Finland, are not going down that path but have adopted a more balanced approach reflecting emphases on creativity, values, morality, and culture. (Have a look at books by Ken Robinson on this or his talks <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms.html" rel="nofollow">here</a>)
From what you write, Indonesia seems to be going down this more balanced path. Personally, provided there is good balance in the curriculum, I think this is terrific! Why do developing countries have to blindly follow what is too often thought to be so great about western education? When I was working for 3 years at Universitas Indonesia, it was plain to me that the worst influence on universities then was in striving to be like an American or European university but without the resources, shared values, and with totally different needs. Why shouldn’t Indonesia educate according to its own values and culture?
As to PAKEM, I believe this is no more or less compatible with the second curriculum approach, provided that teachers, as always, are fully equipped with a sound repertoire of skills to choose the most appropriate methods and classroom arrangements for helping children achieve particular learning goals.
Even the military in liberal democracies, an organisation that may be fairly described as indoctrinating its members, uses a wide range of student-centred learning methods that encourage critical thinking, and, in fact, did substantial work in pioneering many of them for their training needs. <a href="http://www.humrro.org/corpsite/" rel="nofollow">HumRRO</a> in the US has done a lot of work in this area for the US military from at least the 1960’s.
From Dan Moulton on The progressive education fallacy in developing countries, by Gerard Guthrie: a review
Bob: Many thanks for keeping this dialogue going. I will send email contacts of a few other friends--I don't know how to link them to this.
The issue I think will be very pertinent to the new curriculum if it is eventually formalized as being discussed in the papers now. It seems the focus on religion and citizenship, etc. is a way to address radicalism, "primordialism" (whatever term they use to mean ethic group focused vs. nationalism focused) and even bullying and fights among students. I guess this is a worthy goal but perhaps brings the system back to nation building and pancasila educational goals in the early Suharto years, as Mark writes, and a turn from the currently expressed goal of preparing youth to compete in the global economy. (Heavy investments in international standard schools follows from this policy.) It will be interesting to see if they will continue to state the latter as the over arching goal of education while changing the underpinings that mitiagate (remove sciene and English with more religion and (Indonesian) citizedship. I don't know which is better and that is up to Indonesian leaders. Only stakeholders should at least be cognizant of inherent contridictions.
So if they go through with this curriculum change what is the future of instructional methods such as Pakem which is supposed to engender critical thining and self expression? Would this be an inherent contridiction? I have no answers but would welcome opinions
From Wesley Morgan on Note: Whatever happened to the Pacific Seasonal Worker Pilot Scheme evaluation?
Pure speculation, but could a failure to release the evaluation be linked to the continuing consideration of labour mobility as part of the PACER-Plus negotiations?
Officials from Australia, New Zealand and the Forum Island Countries will meet in Samoa this month to continue the trade talks - including discussing whether the SWS and NZ's RSE Scheme can meaningfully be included in a final PACER-Plus agreement.
From Jean Foerster on What does “Why Nations Fail” mean for International Aid?
"A better defence is that a lot of aid will not generate economic development but, done properly, can at least make life substantially less miserable to millions of people who live below the poverty line"...That's exactly what elites in extractive political insitutions want aid to provide...for political stability so they can continue to extract wealth and power while aid agencies continue to maintain political stability in their country. Aid therefore can be viewed as keeping these institutions in power.
From Sam Koyama on How can PNG fight the resource curse?
Each Resource Project runs its own TCS Projects; eg; Oil Search Ltd, Porgera Gold Mine via Barrick, Ok Tedi etc. but they all come together under the oversight of the Department of National Planning & Monitoring under the Economic Sector and are all approved by the Internal Revenue Commission. Thus, the best places to check for a summary of TCS projects would be DNPM & IRC. You would find a list of projects, type of project, costs, duration of implementation whether the projects are new or in some exceptional cases; rehabiliation of existing proejcts.
From Garth Luke on The judgement of their peers: an interview with the OECD’s Karen Jorgensen