DOCUMENT RESUME

Students in Papua New Guinea experience considerable difficulty in dealing with much of their work--especially in science and mathematics. The ability to achieve some acknowledged level of excellence is dependent upon cognitive factori. During 1972 a series of pilot studies were carried out in various secondary and tertiary institutions to investigate students ' basic difficulties and to develop a set of testing procedures. These studies formed a basis for an investigation in 1973. A battery of "logic/quantitative " tests was administered to seven groups of high school and college students. The tests are described and analyzed in detail. A series of interviews were conducted with a substantial sub-sample of the groups that had taken the tests. A full analysis of the results has not yet been carried out. One of the broad findings of the study has been that students in general perform a good deal better (given essentially th