The Fiji Education Sector Programme or FESP, which began with the signing of a funding agreement between the Fiji Government and the European Union in 2004, will come to an end on November 30.
This programme has resulted in 468 construction works and resource provision in 868 schools across the country.
FESP programme manager Mr Jone Naisau said the programme was the result of the 2000 Education Commission which had recommendations about how access to education could be improved in Fiji.
“The recommendations from the commission were taken up by the European Union, which saw the difficulties in Fiji’s education sector. Thus, they gave a grant of $56m for the programme,” Mr Naisau said.
“This was mostly for the rural and remote schools in the country. The main focus was for students of these schools, who don’t have access to electricity, water or boats, could get better access to education.
“The FESP did an improvement in the existing buildings or they had to build new buildings and get electricity into these remote schools so that access to education could be improved.”
Mr Naisau said the major assistance given by FESP was for improvement in infrastructure, provision of ample resources and the need to make the education department efficient in dealing with problems relating to access to education.
“Efficient in the sense that we needed to put resources into the education departments as well. We provided the departments with vehicles or boats so that they could reach the very remote schools,” he said.
“For the five and half years the FESP has been in existence, we have managed to reach 868 schools throughout the country which we selected and targeted. The interventions for these different schools are different. Some schools needed new building while some schools needed renovation.
“Some schools are good but they lack the resources so we put in science equipment, photocopiers, computers, desks and chairs, dining tables and beds. There were two main interventions, one was infrastructure and the other was resources. Another one was capacity building.
“We funded a lot of training for the education officers, principals, head teachers and for the teachers in curriculum.”
The FESP also provided $2m assistance to disaster-affected schools in 2009 and 2010.