Curriculum officers of the Ministry of Education are delighted to learn in their FILNA workshops that the Literacy and Numeracy Strategies they were conducting worked well on the students when taught in vernacular and then translated in English.
Fijian language speakers who first learned the concepts in vernacular grasp the lessons fairly easily when explained later in English.
Teachers involved in the workshops used their own classes to research and trial strategies learned in the workshops.
Hindi and Rotuman language speakers are contemplating to use the same strategy on their vernacular speaking students.
The other impact of the workshop is shown in the enthusiasm of other teachers of schools who did not participate in the workshops but are using the same strategy amongst their students.
Feedback from these schools has shown marked improvement in the students’ work.
FILNA has been implemented in primary schools for the last five years.
This year the Ministry of Education decided to review students’ performance based on FILNA because concern was expressed that some students were not performing very well in reading, writing and mathematics. So the Ministry directed that research and trials be conducted in sixty selected schools in 2009 to improve the literacy and numeracy performance of these students.
The Ministry was supported by the Fiji Education Sector Programme which is funded by AusAID
Filipe Bole
Minister for Education, National Heritage, Culture and Arts, Youth and Sports, Labour, Industrial Relations and Employment.