The Papua New Guinea Government is to delay any switch in the education curriculum until 2014 by when a special task force will have looked into the merits or otherwise of switching from the outcomes-based education, or OBE, to the previous objectives based system.
The Prime Minister Peter O'Neill says the task force would be chaired by Divine Word University president Father Jan Czuba, assisted by Dr Thomas Webster of the National Research Institute and two other educationists.
The National newspaper reports Mr O'Neill saying there are a lot of debates going on about the outcomes based system.
He says debates are good but sometimes they become too emotional and unhealthy.
Mr O'Neill says the decision to do away with OBE is not a new one as it was initiated by the Somare government in 2010 because of the drop in education standards.
The Prime Minister says the government had invested close to a billion US dollars in education in 2013, which is almost 20 percent of the budget.
Mr O'Neill says the government plans to recruit 500 new local teachers next year and may bring in foreign teachers and nurses to work in the country because of the shortage of these professionals.
