Education in the Pacific Region

The 12-year framework promotes equitable access to high quality education by all Pacific Islanders with a view to enable their countries to effectively deal with the development challenges facing the Pacific region.

The framework encourages inclusivity and opportunities for equal access to informal, primary, secondary and tertiary education and training. It focuses on education quality and the importance of working cooperatively in the region and beyond.

While Pacific countries integrate what they consider relevant parts of the PacREF into their national education policies, programs and practices, the framework also acts a tool to identify and understand similarities and differences across the region. It offers organizing mechanisms for sector planning, reporting and collaboration, and gives development partners an understanding of where the region's resourcing priorities lie.

The PacREF has four key policy areas to maximize gains in student learning outcomes and wellbeing:

• Quality and relevance: Provide all learners with a safe and supportive environment, within which they are offered high quality learning opportunities that are meaningful, valuable, inclusive and future-focused.
• Learning pathway: Provide all learners equal access to multiple and seamless pathways and modalities of learning that will allow them to meet their full potential.
• Student outcomes and wellbeing: Make sure all learners acquire the knowledge, skills, values and attributes to enable them to contribute to their families, communities and to nation building.
• The teaching profession: Support and empower teachers through opportunities for continuous development, shared understanding and accountability.

The PacREF is divided into three 4-year phases to facilitate in-depth program review by the education ministers.

The coordinating agencies for the Pacific region are the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the University of the South Pacific.

Six countries (Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu) have decided to combine their GPE implementation grant allocation into a regional grant totalling $14.9 million. The grant supports the implementation of the PacREF Program, together with New Zealand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the PacREF implementing agencies and other development partners. The GPE grant covers 85% of the total costs of the PacREF Program, which supports all 15 Pacific countries.

PacREF implementing agencies, namely SPC (Pacific Community), USP (University of the South Pacific), UNESCO, UNICEF and APTC (Australia Pacific Training Coalition), provide technical support for the development and implementation of these tools and services, while countries are expected to make the best use of them to improve their national education systems, as well as enhance Pacific regionalism.

• Application
• Program document
• Progress report - December 2022
• PacREF implementation mid-term review report. January 2023

The region received two other regional grants from GPE:

• A $200,000 education sector plan development grant (2017-2018)
• A $390,000 program development grant (2020-2021).