The Ministry of Education has conducted a survey with all primary and secondary schools in the country to ensure they are following the ministry’s language policy.
And the ministry is now looking at its current language policy.
“There are three parts to this policy. Firstly, we look at teaching of vernacular in the lower primary, that is, classes one, two and three where teaching is done generally in the vernacular languages- mainly in Hindi, Fijian, Rotuman, Banaban and so forth,” the ministry permanent secretary Dr Brij Lal Dr Lal said.
“The ministry will encourage teachers in the lower primary to teach in vernacular so that it is easy for students to understand as well.”
Dr Lal said the teaching of the conversational i-taukei and Hindi, which started from Class Five and goes up to secondary level, is also encouraged by the ministry.
“We would like the Fijian students of Indian ethnicity to know a little bit of conversational Fijian and the i-taukei students to know a little bit of conversational Hindi,” he said.
“No child should be deprived of his or her mother tongue. That is why we are taking a good survey throughout the country of all primary and secondary schools to see that all these are being implemented.
“So far we have received about 60 per cent of forms with positive outcomes. Some have some difficulties of not having the right teachers and so forth, which we will address after all these survey forms have come back.”
The ministry has furthermore provided Licensed Teacher Grants to facilitate the teaching of vernacular in primary schools.
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