Minister Rosy Akbar recently met with her counterpart from South Australia; Hon. John Gardner on the margins of the annual Education World Forum in London.
The two (2) Ministers in sharing information on mutual areas of interest highlighted their respective priorities and initiatives of their Education sectors, as well as explored opportunities for potential collaboration.
Minister Gardner in his welcome remarks, expressed Australia’s gratitude for the demonstration of our shared “vuvale partnership”, through the deployment of our army personnel; to assist Australia at in the height of the unfortunate calamity (bush fire) that it has been experiencing since late last year.
He indicated that the close and long-standing relation between our countries is quite unique, and has stood the test of time. In spite of incidents of differing views and positions on certain issues, both nations have always been ready to render support whenever needed.
Hon. Akbar in acknowledging this opportunity to dialogue, acknowledged Australia’s unwavering support, particularly in the area of Literacy and Numeracy; as well as the diverse areas of training and specialised capacity building.
She further conveyed Fiji’s gratitude for Australia’s immediate response and assistance post TC Winston in 2016, particularly in the most affected areas. “Fiji is greatly appreciative for Australia’s genuine support in adopting Koro and for the reconstruction of classrooms, quarters, and other ancillary facilities” said Minister Akbar.
She further added that Fiji is earnestly grateful for all the assistance towards our Fiji Education Management Information Systems (FEMIS), a system that is running successfully back home; one that has played an instrumental role in ensuring streamlining process through data sharing and management.
As the Minister responsible for Education in South Australia, Hon. Gardner highlighted that his areas of priority since taking up office in 2018 include early childhood services, preschool, primary and secondary schooling; as well as tertiary and vocational training.
Minister Akbar highlighted that an area that Fiji wishes to advance and aggressively promote is on Early Childhood Education Services (ECES), the foundation for ensuring effective and inclusive learning. Given that this is also a core pillar of development in Australia’s education sector, Fiji would like to solicit assistance from Australia on ECE models as well as materials that could be used by our ECE institutions.
To leverage the quality of our Education system, particularly the different training modules used by our training providers; Fiji endeavours to establish a Qualification framework aimed at ensuring the quality and relevance of the education training that are provided by our teacher training institutions.
Another spectrum of this framework is to assess the readiness of our trained teachers, prior to entering the teaching field; and becoming teaching practitioners.
Hon. Gardner indicated that this is indeed an integral part of improving the standard of our Education system and stated that though Australia has a teacher competency framework system in existence, its implementation remains a challenge hence; one of his current project is the review of this system, and to ensure its applicability.
Both Ministers have committed to exchanging information and ideas on the establishment of an Accreditation system, envisaged to improve and leverage the quality of our entire education system; including our Curriculum, teaching modules, reporting mechanisms as well as the examinations.
The two (2) Ministers agreed and have committed to advancing these fundamental issues and other mutual areas of priority.