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Access to textbooks
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Teachers were asked about the number of textbooks for literacy and numeracy that grade three and grade five students had access to. They were provided with five options to choose from.
- Each student has their own textbook.
- Two students share one textbook.
- More than two students share one textbook.
- Only the teacher has the textbook.
- No textbook is provided.
Student access to textbooks
On average, teachers in Papua New Guinea reported that 6% of grade three students and 7% of grade five students had their own literacy textbooks. For numeracy, the numbers were higher, with 16% of grade three and 13% of grade five students having their own numeracy textbooks. So, about one out of six students across the grade levels had access to a personal numeracy textbook, and less than one out of ten had access to a personal literacy textbook.
A significant proportion of students had no easy access to textbooks to study from. About half of grade three and five students had no literacy textbook or only the teacher had a textbook. This finding was lower but still substantial for students and numeracy textbooks; more than three out of ten students across both year levels had no numeracy textbook or only the teacher had a textbook. There were large differences seen across participating countries in PILNA 2021. The proportions of students having their own literacy and numeracy textbooks ranged from 0% to 87% for grade three students, while for grade five students, the range was even higher, from 0% to 100%.
The full range of teacher responses by literacy, numeracy and grade level is shown in Table TT2.2.
What does this mean?
Access to textbooks varies throughout Papua New Guinea schools, creating different learning environments for students, depending on the school they attend. The reasons for this are not known. It may be that some schools are experiencing resource issues or textbooks are not deemed necessary by some schools. In the region, textbook access across both grade levels varies significantly by country. This suggests that countries have distinct learning environments or textbook needs. As learning environments throughout the region are diverse, it is difficult to determine the effect on students that this text book access variance may have.
