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Tackling Student Drop‑out in Simbu Province, Papua New Guinea

Overhead view of two people sitting at a desk and collaborating on handwritten notes in a grid-lined notebook, with one person pointing using a pen and the other holding a pencil; colorful notebooks are stacked nearby.

Guest Blog by Mirriam Dii, Isaac George, Bernadette Tania Goye, Issac Kuine, Maree Wai Tombe

In Simbu Province, more of our students are dropping out or leaving school early each year, and it is becoming the norm. At the beginning of every school year, we enroll more students, but by the end of the academic year the dropout rate increases and not all of the students we enroll end up graduating. In fact, about 15% of the total number of students in grades seven to ten drop out each year. We have about an equal number of boys and girls dropping out each year, making this a gender-neutral problem. Therefore, throughout our PDIA course, we worked on the problem of high student drop-out rates wherein students leave school before completing or reaching grade ten and graduating with a nationally recognized, formal Basic Education School Certificate. Our goal is to retain more students in school until they complete their grade ten and graduate with a high school certificate, as per our team name (Student Retention Squad).

Read more: Tackling Student Drop‑out in Simbu Province, Papua New Guinea

After identifying our team’s name, we settled on the problem statement, ‘Student Drop-out Mid-education Year.’ Initially, our approach to the problem statement was general and broad. However, by using PDIA tools such as the fishbone diagram, we were able to narrow our focus by deconstructing our problem to identify root causes and sub-causes. Some of the main causes we identified were teacher-related, school-related, education system, family & personal reasons, socio-cultural reasons, and financial factors. In doing this work, we saw how new reforms within the education division have failed to solve the problem and have in fact created other problems during their rollout.

We then used the triple-A change space analysis to identify potential entry points. Once these were identified, we began testing ideas and using our iteration check-in tool to reflect on the progress we were making on a weekly basis. Even though the course has ended, we want to keep implementing these ideas over a longer time frame. Therefore, we plan to use PDIA elements in our School Learning Improvement Plan (SLIP program) next year. We also hope that there will be a possibility for PDIA to be incorporated into the school policy so that other teachers can use similar tactics with their students in the future. This might help to retain as many students as possible and minimize the increasing trend of students leaving school early.

PNG is fortunate to have The Voice Inc.’s Local Leadership and Collective Action Program (LLCAP), which incorporates PDIA in collaboration with Building State Capability. This partnership will empower us make positive and effective contributions to our communities to bring about change.

This blog was written by participants who completed a 12-week PDIA for PNG online learning program from August – November 2025. 44 participants successfully completed this program.