Cambridge Education-led consortium evaluates ICT in education in Papua province, Indonesia

Commissioned by the Provincial Government of Papua, the project is funded by the Australian Department for Foreign Affairs and Trade and the European Commission through the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The consortium comprises the Australian Council for Educational Research, the University of the Sunshine Coast and Willi Toisuta Associates.

The evaluation will involve visits to 200 schools to provide provincially representative data on how Papuan schools have participated in several government ICT in education initiatives. These include an education television channel that is broadcast in the province, a web portal for teachers and students, mobile phone applications for teachers and a distance teacher education programme. The findings will be used to judge how effective existing programmes have been and how to develop ICT services run by national and provincial education authorities in schools across Papua, which has the lowest education attainment rates in the country.

Cambridge Education’s project director Carol Bellew said:

“We provide education services to the ADB on a regular basis and are currently working for them on projects in Myanmar and China, amongst other locations. Indonesia’s most remote schools are located in Papua, making data collection for this project challenging. The consortium is overcoming this by using a stratified sampling methodology and employing data collectors from regional hubs to visit schools that are clustered near each other. In doing so, we seek to build the capacity of the provincial Ministry of Education and Culture to plan and undertake future surveys.”