A team of senior education officials from Papua New Guinea’s National Department of Education (NDoE), Provincial Education Divisions (PDoE) and Bougainville Department of Education (BDoE) travelled to Queensland, Australia recently for a learning exchange visit with Good to Great Schools Australia (GGSA). The learning exchange was facilitated by the Australian Government’s Partnerships for Improving Education (PIE) program with the goal of generating innovative ideas and approaches to tackling challenges that impact teaching and learning in rural remote schools in PNG and Australia alike. GGSA is an Indigenous-owned non-profit organization, founded by the esteemed Indigenous leader Noel Pearson. GGSA collaborates with schools in the Cape York peninsula to enhance student learning outcomes. The PNG delegation visited 2 schools in the Cape, Hopevale Primary and Coen Primary. They observed classrooms where teachers used direct instruction to engage students in reading, writing, spelling, and mathematics. They also had the chance to observe students participating in various Indigenous cultural and musical activities. The team learned how these schools use data to monitor teaching and learning progress, with attendance being a key component of their weekly tracking system. BDoE acting Secretary Dorothy Kenneth said, “We were impressed by the consistent strategies teachers employed to engage students, and by how quickly the schools had improved their results.” Kenneth said every teacher was mentored by an instructional coach, usually the School Principal or Deputy, who regularly conducts teacher professional development, observes lessons, and helped teachers master the appropriate teaching strategies. Some of the key takeaways for the PNG delegation were that the schools used consistent teaching practices, along with the modelling and reinforcement of high expectations. This leads to improved student engagement and high interest in learning. This approach helps students gain confidence in their mastery of literacy and mathematics foundations. This month, representatives from Good to Great Schools Australia will travel to PNG to understand the challenges encountered by remote schools in the country and to investigate how their strategies can be tailored to fit these schools.