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Impact of external factors on teaching capacity
School leaders were asked to what extent they thought their school’s capacity to provide instruction was being hindered by external factors. These factors were natural disasters, pandemics (such as Covid-19), and epidemics (such as measles). They could respond with ‘To a large extent’, ‘to a moderate extent’, To a small extent’, or ‘Not at all’.
Students from schools affected by external factors
Table SLT3.2 shows the percentage of students in Papua New Guinea whose school leader reported that their school’s capacity to provide instruction was hindered ‘To a large extent’ or ‘To a moderate extent’ by an external factor.
Pandemics hindered instruction in schools attended by 60% of students in PILNA 2021. For all PILNA countries, this percentage ranged from 0% to 76%. This was the single largest challenge reported by school leaders.
Natural disasters hindered instruction in schools attended by 13% of students, while epidemics hindered instruction in schools attended by 13% of students.
What does this mean?
Over half of all students in the region attended schools where instruction was hindered ‘To a moderate extent’ or ‘To a large extent’ by a pandemic.
Natural disasters and epidemics also affected one out of every ten students across the region to a large or moderate extent (natural disasters, 13%; epidemics, 13%).
This research shows that school leaders believe these external factors had a substantial impact on the instruction of students in the region.
