The largest of the Pacific Island countries, Papua New Guinea has a population of over 10 million (World Bank, 2022) but is still considered a small state of the Commonwealth.
COL plays an important role in supporting Papua New Guinea’s education and training systems, particularly in the areas of Open Schooling and women’s empowerment through skills development, and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) and data resilience through the Partnership for Open, Distance and Flexible Learning (ODFL) in the Pacific. Papua New Guinea is also an active member of the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC) network and benefits from programmes offered through COL’s regional centre, the Pacific Centre for Flexible and Open Learning for Development (PACFOLD). In addition, learners from Papua New Guinea participate in COL’s free open online courses and make use of a wide range of openly available learning resources and capacity-building initiatives.
