Pacific Benchmarking for Education Results (PaBER): a synthesis report; Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands

The Pacific Benchmarking for Education Results (PaBER) project was introduced in 2012 to improve the quality of education and student performance across the Pacific, in particular to respond to low levels of literacy and numeracy. The PaBER project provides education ministries with systematic and reliable evidence and analysis of their own systems, benchmarked against high performing systems globally. This gives policy-makers and other stakeholders the opportunity to judge the strengths and weaknesses of current policy and systems, assess how these may influence learning, and formulate appropriate reforms and action. The PaBER project was set up to test this approach in three pilot countries (Papua New Guinea, Samoa and the Solomon Islands). To achieve these ambitions, the project was designed around three components: i) learning assessment of Year 6 students’ performance in literacy and numeracy, based on the use of the Pacific Islands Literacy and Numeracy Assessment (PILNA) in 2012 and 2015; ii) policy and system assessment, benchmarking of national education systems in each of five policy domains: Teacher Quality, Assessment Systems, Curriculum and Materials, School Governance and Management, and Education Management Information Systems (EMIS); iii) policy in practice, consisting of research on policy implementation at school level. Along with institutional capacity assessments, this body of work is enabling a dynamic view of education systems, with a particular focus on student learning. This report pulls together common evidence across the three countries, and sets out strategic generic recommendations that will impact on learning outcomes. The report highlights some key emerging findings where there is strong evidence and the ways these intersect across policy domains. Recommendations are based on this, set out as both policy reforms and actions to improve delivery, premised on linked responses to key barriers to improving student learning.