Assessment on Manus elementary schools teaching in local vernaculars

Papua New Guinea National Department of Education endorsed and authorized the use of more than 850 local vernaculars in the country to become the language of instruction of elementary schools in Papua New Guinea. The Department of Education envisaged that the bridging of learning from the known local vernaculars to English would enhance the skills and learning abilities of the young learners. However, this study found that the countries with no written orthographies like PNG found it difficult to use the local vernaculars as the medium of learning instruction. This study found that the 23 schools surveyed in Manus during the research did not translate the national English curricula to local vernaculars because teachers did not understand the local orthographies and they were not qualified to do translation. Therefore, 31 local dialects of Manus Province in Papua New Guinea used as the medium of instruction were not utilized properly because the languages did not have any officially written orthographies.