Boosting literacy in Papua New Guinea
BY ALYCIA VAN-KANNEL*
The Salvation Army has been hard at work in Papua New Guinea providing basic literacy skills in communities across the country.
In PNG, the adult literacy rate is only 63 per cent, and 67 per cent of students drop out of school before completing Grade 8 (*Devette-Chee & Magury, 2022, p. 1).
This is a great gift in villages where there is no other school, or where the available school begins at Grade 3.
Students rely on The Salvation Army for preparation to enter and succeed in Grade 3 and beyond. The Salvation Army also runs some adult literacy programs to support individuals who never attended or stopped attending school for various reasons, such as access or cost barriers.
The 35 literacy programs (70 classes) are administered by corps officers and run by corps volunteers who are trained in basic phonics and teaching. External funding helps support the programs, and the communities also assist the schools in various ways. Sometimes community members donate stationaries, materials and labour to build classrooms, hold fundraisers to provide additional funds, and more.
Wherever they operate, primary schools are eager to accept Salvos Literacy kids. They often perform higher than their peers and are more likely to complete primary school. Some students have gone on to post-secondary programs, some become literacy teachers themselves, and adult literacy students can often obtain paid employment for the first time.
In several communities, the literacy programs inspire community members to seek formal registered educational opportunities for their children. At Tent City Literacy [in photo attached, students with blue shirts, teacher in black, grey, orange dress; Alyshia in TSA grey shirt], the teachers who taught at the corps literacy school were part of leading the way to transition the school into a registered elementary and now are themselves registered teachers who continue to teach at Tent City Salvation Army Elementary School.
At Hohola Literacy, Elijah [see main photo above] is currently learning all of the letter sounds. He says he is most proud of learning how to write his name after attending literacy class this year and wants to one day be an engineer.
Other students share that they are working towards being able to read an English Bible, gain employment, or catch up in order to return to formal schooling and complete high school. The teachers are eager to report that from last year’s class of graduates, many are now employed, while some others have been able to return to school.
Future plans for The Salvation Army corps literacy programs include providing teachers with a standardised curriculum and resource guide, building in additional literacy skills (such as financial, workplace, social) for adults, improving monitoring and operations, and providing more texts for students to enjoy, including with more PNG languages and representation.
Devette-Chee, Kilala, and Peter Magury. “A Snapshot of Three Key 2015 and 2019 Indicators for Universal Basic Education in Papua New Guinea: What Have We Learnt?” Spotlight, vol. 15, no. 14, Oct. 2022, pp. 1–4, https://pngnri.org/images/Publications/Spotlight_Vol_15_Issue_14_CHECK.pdf.
Alycia Van-Kannel is the Director of Schools (Literacy and Early Education), The Salvation Army, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands Territory.
