The politics of free education in Papua New Guinea

Abstract

In 1981, the members of Papua New Guinea's National Assembly moved that education should become free from Grades 1 to 10 the following year. The motion was partly supported for humanitarian reasons. But in the original debate, and even more strongly during subsequent discussion and attempts at implementation, political factors came strongly to the fore. One fact which was not emphasised, when the parliamentarians originally passed the motion, was that the national government, in a decentralised system, actually had no power to abolish fees; and because of poor organisation and political rivalries, the scheme largely backfired. This paper examines the reasons why the scheme was launched, the reasons for its demise, its implications for social and inter-provincial inequality, and its effects on national-provincial government relations.