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ODE Overview of Evaluations of Australia’s aid for Basic Education in Lao PDR and Papua New Guinea

Education is to be the flagship sector of Australia’s increased aid program.  Given this, the lessons from the evaluations of aid for basic education in Lao PDR and Papua New Guinea will be an important input in shaping future increases in aid to education.

The scale of support for basic education in Lao PDR and Papua New Guinea is vastly different.  In 2005-06 Lao PDR accounted for 1.1 per cent of AusAID disbursements for basic education whereas Papua New Guinea accounted for 24 per cent.  The evaluation highlighted some important achievements and limitations in the results of the aid to the basic education sector. 

Including:

• In Lao PDR Australian support contributed to approximately 4 per cent of the primary teaching force received training, extended the work of UNICEF and the World Food Program in improving the quality of primary schooling in selected districts and helped to demonstrate that it is possible to meet the primary schooling needs of ethnic communities and their teachers in remote and highly disadvantaged areas.
• In Papua New Guinea Australian support contributed to the development of a new curriculum and the start up of elementary education with the training of more than 9000 teachers.

The country reports drew attention to a number of issues that are relevant to the way that Australia supports basic education in future.  These include a recommendation that AusAID should devote more attention to the demand side of education. This requires an understanding of why children from poor households do not attend school.  It was also recommended that AusAID draw more explicit links between service delivery outcomes and broader public sector reforms.  This recognises that just working within education ministries is not sufficient to achieve outcomes in basic education. 

See Overview of basic education evaluation for Lao PDR and PNG [PDF 198kb]