The Papua New Guinea education department says the government has plans to provide more classrooms to help schools cope with overcrowding.
Many schools in PNG are struggling to accommodate its students following a spike in school attendance, due to the government's free education policy, which has boosted enrolment numbers.
The Acting Secretary for the Department of Education, Luke Taita, says the government understands that schools were not designed to cope with such an influx and it has plans to develop infrastructure over the next five years.
"It is the government's thinking that over the time we will make sure that we have adequate classrooms to cater for these children. At the moment the Department of Education is also trying to address it by introducing the shift teaching, where some students will attend half a day and then another half of students attend the other half a day."
Luke Taita says the free education policy is benefiting 1.6 million students across 8000-plus schools in the first quarter of this year and these figures are expected to grow.
