EDUCATION AND THE RESOURCES SECTOR
The link between natural resource-led growth and education is largely positive, as revenue flows from the operations tend to support the expansion of educational opportunities for children and adults at local, provincial and national levels.
In the case of Papua New Guinea, the most obvious national expression of this positive link was the extension of the ‘tuition fee free’ policy at the national level in 2011 to cover all education to Grade 10, and significant subsidies for Grade 11-12, vocational, distance and university education. In 2014, it was reported that this policy was to cost K650million. The policy itself represents a very clear attempt to spread the educational dividend from the resources boom right across the country, and is in line with international best practice in the policy sense, and Papua New Guinea’s international human rights obligations (under the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)). The main concern expressed regarding this policy relates to its implementation, with the need to ensure that there are sufficient schools, with adequate teacher, equipment and material resources (as discussed above), able to cope with and deliver quality education to the increased numbers of students that the policy is designed to reach. Capacity development for more and higher quality education needs to go hand-in-hand with resource allocation, to ensure additional resources can be used effectively and for the equitable benefit of
the population.28
At the Provincial level, New Ireland Province, home to the Lihir and Simberi gold mines, was commended by the NEFC (2013:49) as the only one of the resource rich provinces that had continued to provide significant additional resources to the education sector (over and above the cost of providing a basic education system). There are also provincial investments in education not directly captured by the NEFC process that show the potential to link resource revenues with improved education outcomes. One prominent example is the support given to education (from primary through to tertiary) by the Governor of Enga Province, Peter Ipatas. The Ipatas Foundation channels Provincial royalties from the Porgera gold mine into support for education facilities and students, by way of training opportunities, such as scholarships to attend 6 month skills training in tourism, hospitality, and heavy diesel fitting training in the Philippines (43 students graduated from the latter in June 2014).
Locally, there are various mechanisms that have the potential to provide real educational benefits to children (and adults) living close to major resource projects. These include improvements in access to educational facilities as companies (and/or the national and provincial governments) commit to the construction of new facilities under the Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) or Benefit Sharing Agreement (BSA) for the development. At Porgera, for example, the agreements that flowed from the 1989 Development Forum provided for the construction of a new high school at Porgera, the development of an international school, and commitments to increased support for vocational training, distance tertiary education and more broadly, a range of elementary and primary schools in the immediate area of the mine, some of which were to replace pre-existing facilities. The construction of these facilities (Figure 5.6 above illustrates the Porgera High School with the mine site in the distance) rapidly expanded the opportunities for education for Porgerans and others from surrounding districts, although there are on-going issues with funding, management and administrative capacity, and securing teacher quality in remote environments.
Other initiatives include the establishment of Children’s Trust funds at most of the project sites, with funds typically derived from a share of project royalties and usually split between direct support for landowner children educational costs and a longer- term element (as discussed in Box 4.6). Again this approach is in line with best practice in terms of translating resource wealth into improvements in human development. Details vary by project but the Porgera SML Landowners Children’s Trust, one of the earliest established, has run for more than 20 years, despite occasional problems, and has allowed girls and boys from the mine lease areas access to international schools and scholarships for further national and international secondary and tertiary study.
A further contribution to local human development from these major resource projects are direct training and scholarships provided (often preferentially) to local landowner children and young adults, for a range of employment-related as well as broader forms of education. Ok Tedi, for example, has provided university scholarships to 871 students over the period from 1984. Employment related training in the sector has also provided opportunities for some Papua New Guineans to migrate and become employed in the global extractive industry in other parts of the world: Filer et al (2013) provide evidence that suggests there may be up to 600 Papua New Guineans employed in the resources sector in Australia alone, many in well-paying professional jobs. There are some direct vocational links between the extractive industries and the tertiary sector, including industry support for geology at the University of Papua New Guinea, and a Communication for Development course at UniTech Lae, whose graduates are increasingly taking up posts in Community Affairs Departments within the extractives sector. Vocational training by the companies themselves is also a contributor to human resource development: the PNG-LNG project during the construction phase provided over two million hours of certified training to employees. Despite these largely positive effects on the education sector, there are concerns that children in communities around large mining
Porgera High School with mine and waste-dumps in background
28 Media reports also indicated that despite the free education policy, many schools charged “project fees” which caught many parents off-guard, and thus instead of enhancing access to education may have had some adverse effects with parents not expecting to pay project fees per child. Additionally, secondary schools and tertiary institutes also reportedly delayed enrolments by students when funds from the Government were delayed.
or oil operations are often less likely to take up educational opportunities. This occurs particularly in communities that are recipients of large and regular compensation or royalty flows, because increased revenue undermines the population’s interest and incentive to access education for employment and improved livelihoods and there are reports of limited parental support for the education system in these same communities (Java 2011) for the same reason.
In sum, then, there are a range of linkages between the extractive industries and education in Papua New Guinea, at a variety of scales. While easily the largest and most critical link is through the national level budget allocations that have facilitated the Tuition Fee Free policy, there are also more select provincial and local-level initiatives that connect to particular provincial or local revenue streams or extractive operations. The reality is, though, that the direct contribution of the sector is dwarfed by the needs of the population, which overall continues to lag behind other Pacific Island countries in terms of educational engagement and outcomes. And in fact, while the sector’s contribution to education is mostly positive, it is the Government as the duty-bearer that needs to ensure that the rights to education of its population is protected and promoted. An area for further research is whether education attainment levels are higher in areas where extractive industries are operating in comparison to other areas.
5.5 GENDER
While the Constitution of Papua New Guinea provides for equal opportunities and benefits for all citizens, and despite the country having signed up to several international agreements on women’s empowerment and gender equality (including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
(CEDAW)), levels of gender inequality in Papua New Guinea
continue to be a pervasive problem, as highlighted by the low Gender Inequality Index (GII) rank of 134 out of 148 countries. In fact, the 2010 MDG Progress Report for Papua New Guinea makes it clear that the targets set for the promotion of gender equality and women’s empowerment are not likely to be reached by 2015. Disparities are rooted in a complex combination of the country’s traditional forms of gender relations and the relatively recent exposure of traditional and largely isolated and tribal society to rapid modernization. This inequality limits women’s capabilities to achieve higher levels of human development. International experience also clearly shows that high levels of gender inequality provide a serious constraint on promoting sustainable and inclusive human development for society as a whole (World Bank 2012a).
The 2011-2012 Country Gender Assessment of Papua New Guinea (World Bank 2012b) provides three key pillars of gender disparity: (1) Access to resources through education, health and
entrepreneurship; (2) Access to rights through legal and social empowerment (including power to address gender-based family and sexual violence); and (3) Access to voice through participation in decision-making.
Amongst others, the assessment notes that:
• There is a persistent gap in the percentage of girls and boys of eligible age enrolled in secondary school, tertiary education and training institutions. At primary school level, the gender gap has narrowed in the last 15 years. This becomes expressed through the fact that only 57 per cent of women reported they could read and write, compared to 69 per cent of men (HIES 2009/10).
• There has been little improvement in key health indicators, especially for the majority rural population. With limited improvements in health service delivery, the impact of this is larger for women who face greater obstacles (security risks, for example) to accessing health care than men.
• Gender inequality at home (decision making and control over resources) hinders women‘s health seeking behaviour, which can cause delays in seeking medical help during birth delivery and affect decisions on the use of family planning methods. • Violence (and the threat or fear of it) significantly reduces
the range of actions a woman can take to support her family and enhance her health and education, as well as that of her children.
• There are inequalities in men‘s and women‘s economic opportunities in the agriculture sector (access to extension services and training, for example).
• Women traders are more disadvantaged than men by unsafe and insanitary markets, and poor transport infrastructure. • There are continuing differences and inequality between
women and men in formal labour force participation, occupations and wages.
• Women victims of crime continue to struggle with the police and prosecution authorities, as there is often insufficient policing and inadequate application of the law, and in many cases the predominately male law enforcement officers do not treat women victims of crime with adequate level of seriousness due to their own cultural perceptions. This results in low levels of prosecution of cases of family sexual violence, and gender-based violence (GBV).
• Village courts typically apply customary principles, which may discriminate against women, while the formal justice system is often difficult to access, particularly for rural people and especially rural women.
• Studies of gender-based violence (GBV) indicate that such violence appears to be widely accepted, with extremely high rates of GBV perpetuated by men in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea, in addition to high rates of what the study referred to as ‘economically and emotionally abusive acts’ against women (Fulu 2013). There are also typically severely limited protection services available for GBV victims.