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QNA WITH MINISTER FOR EDUCATION, NATIONAL HERITAGE, CULTURE AND ARTS, YOUTH AND SPORTS, LOCAL GOVT & EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS, MR FILIPE BOLE . The Department of Information conducted an exclusive interview with the Minister for Education Mr Filipe Bole on various developments that are happening within the Education sector.Apart from these developments Mr Bole highlights the various challenges that affect education and how the ministry looks at solutions to solve these challenges. By: Anshoo Mala Chandra Q: As reported in the media it has been found that some schools face water cuts, which disrupts the classes. What is the Ministry’s role in resolving this issue? A: What we normally do when there is water problem in any of the schools which cannot be repaired quickly, we ask the school to close and give time for repairs because water is used for drinking and is essential. If there is no water the advice is usually close the schools and don’t send your kids to the schools until the water problem is resolved. Q: What measures can be placed to prevent further shortages? A: For schools to start, one of the requirements is they must have pipes, they must have water, if there is no pipe, than there must be a tank where the water must be stored for use by the children, that is a requirement before a school is recognised and registered. The responsibility to ensure that water supply is available belongs to the owners of the schools, the committees, the churches and the organizations. It must be supplied continuously. Q: Cabinet has recently endorsed the Fiji Islands National Curriculum Framework and the current curriculum development work associated with it. What are the benefits of this curriculum framework? A: We have just approved a new National Curriculum Framework which is used for teaching all subjects at schools. Curriculum revision goes on all the time because each year we look at new ways in which subjects can be taught more effectively, we look at those new ways and develop it so that it can be offered to teachers at training colleges and in Universities. Another main feature for the first time is the development of the Kindergarten Curriculum Guideline for kindergartens. We never had a kindergarten curriculum in Fiji because in the past it has been isolated pieces of knowledge collected by the wives of expatriate teachers who have kids, they didn’t have kindergartens where they could send their children so created some sort of curriculum for their own little kids. Q: So what are the highlights of the curriculum for toddlers? A: In the new framework we have developed one for the kindergartens it is called “ Na Noda Mataniciva” in Fijian, and “Humare Moti” in Hindi for all students in Fiji ranging from one to six years because they are very important. That’s the formative areas we vision in the development of the child’s thinking. That is when they begin to look at things and they begin to imitate things during that time children learn alot by imitating their parents. If they watch their parents smoke they will begin to think that smoking is good, if they hear their parents swearing they will think it is normal conversation. It is important to look at this particular portion in education. The reason we have not developed this in the past is mainly economical because we had funds that focused on the development of primary education from classes six to form seven. But it is also good that a new curriculum framework has been developed and approved by the Government to ensure that the new needs and new modes of teaching are bought forward the improve the education sector in Fiji. Q: What is the progress made by the Higher Education Board? A: Well we had nothing in our law for Higher Education. Higher Education can be defined in many ways some people prefer to call it tertiary education but we are just about done in the preparation of the Higher Education bill, which we will take to the Cabinet in the near future and when promulgated will become the law on Higher Education in Fiji. The primary purpose of that law is really to control and monitor the growth of Higher Education in Fiji and to provide a law which can act as a guide in the development of Higher Education in Fiji. I think basically when we think of Higher Education in Fiji we think of tertiary institutions like the University of the South Pacific, The University of Fiji,the Fiji School of Medicine, the Fiji School of Nursing, the Fiji School of Agriculture that is Higher Education for us. But we also have schools that are Post Secondary, the various computer schools we have in the country. The classification at the moment is doubtful and we have other Universities from outside Fiji that has established branches here, for example Central Queensland and there are other universities online as well. So all those efforts on Higher Education now have to be registered. They all have to be registered before they can practise in Fiji. The whole idea of them registering is not to tell them to stop teaching here no, the idea about registration is to ensure that they are teaching something useful and the quality of the teaching is to standard that is required by our law. At the moment there is no law. The law that binds the University of the South Pacific (USP) for instance is a separate act of parliament, although we fund USP with other regional countries. Any other university has to be established on its own act and University of Fiji was established using other legislations in Fiji. After the promulgation of the new law on Higher Education no other Education institution can be established without being registered under this regulation. Q: What are some of the processors involved? A: Under this legislation we have a Higher Education Commission which is part of the Ministry. The purpose of the Commission is to receive, study and assess the suitability of that application to become either a university or an institution. We have to control this because Higher Education is very important in pushing for the development of the country. It is not until you get the large proportion of the students going through Higher Education that you can see development going in your country. This is because people have to pursue their Masters and PhD level to be looking at special aspects of developments in Fiji. We need to develop our own students to get to the state where they can in detail look at all of our development needs. Q: With the recent increase in the number of students found sniffing glue what is your advice to the students who are engaged in this use of illegal drugs and substance? A: We have told the schools that they should watch out for school children who are involved in such illegal activities. But what surprises me here, is that glue sniffing happens in primary school. It is in this area where people are very inquisitive, they want to try out a lot of things and our advise to schools both primary and secondary is that they should watch out for these experimentations which is carried out by students because most of these students want to know what glue sniffing is like. They don’t know that it actually damages their brain. It can even lead to poisoning. There has been reports in the papers where one student was found unconscious on the bus because of sniffing glue. So the advice to parents is tell your children that it is not wise for them to be sniffing glue. Glue is invented for something else, it is for gluing papers not for sniffing. The parents ought to be more aware of their responsibilities to their children, glue sniffing, smoking, drinking are a result of the breakdown in parental guidance to their children, not the school. When the kids are at school they are under guidance of the teachers. Q: What are some of the ongoing projects of the Ministry of Education? A: Well there are a lot of things happening. One of them is the Teacher Registration Board whereby teachers from next year will have to be registered before they can teach in any school. There is nothing unusual about it because teachers call themselves professionals. These professionals ought to have a body that watches the standard of performance of their own members like doctors, lawyers, accountants they are all professional people and they ought to have their own registration of their own members to guard against any breaching of their work ethics. Q: What would the registration of the board oversee? A: Some of the things registration board would look into is the registration of teachers, they have t0 pay their fees to be registered, secondly their behaviour if they don’t behave properly they can be sacked, their names can be taken away from the list. When the registration is taken away they cannot practise as teachers. A much higher standard performance would be required of the teachers not only performance in teaching but in the area they are going to work. Q: What about in the improvements to examinations? A: This year our main concern is to improve the performance of secondary schools such as exam pass rates on Fiji Junior Certificate (FJC), Fiji School Leaving Certificate (FSLC), and Form 7 certificates examinations. We visited 72 schools in the 4 divisions and I personally visited most of them. We talked to teachers and school management on their assessment of needs. I received positive feedback from teachers who perform well but if there is good performance on the teacher’s side and still schools are not getting anywhere then we need to compliment their teaching needs such as facilities and supplies. For example Industrial arts studies, Home Economics, Science classes and computer classes. Q: Has a board been appointed to overlook he divisions? A: I’ve appointed a 12-member task force to look after the 4 divisions needs. They went back to the schools that we’ve visited and made a detail list of needs that the schools require. Last week we paid for the textbooks, equipments and hopefully when we return again to the schools next year. We’ve already done 50% of improvement and there is few more work to be done in terms of strategies on education. We’ve spent $1.2 million on this and I acknowledge the European Union who supported this project in terms of supplying of textbooks, equipments. The EU has contributed to 19 schools and spent $266,000 for the 4 divisions. It looks like we’ll be spending about $1.4 million in total for this project and hopefully we should see good results in terms of school performance and pass rates. -End- |
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