Government and Ministry policy in Papua New Guinea in the past few years has placed much greater emphasis on the community orientation of education at all levels, but particularly at the level of primary education. One proposed policy change which will help to bring about this orientation concerns language policy, and establishes as a long term goal a situation in which the language of education in the early years of school should be the functional language of the community which the school serves. If this policy is adopted by the government, the Ministry of Education will face many problems in implementing it.