ABSTRACT
In this chapter, issues related to the relationship between quality of education and equality in educational opportunity are explored through a case study of educational development in Papua New Guinea. In the Papua New Guinea context “quality” has tended to be equated to “standard,” or the outcome of a cycle of education as measured by performance on national examinations. It is interesting that one of the pioneers who focussed attention on issues of quality, C.E.Beeby (1966), was also one of the architects of the Papua New Guinea national education system as a member of the Weeden Commission (Weeden, Beeby, and Gris 1969). Recently the World Bank in its focus on quality has gone beyond mere outcomes to include the training of teachers, the management of the educational system, and a series of strategies designed to improve both what and how children learn (Lockheed and Verspoor 1990).
