The Education Quality and Assessment Programme (EQAP) director, Michelle Belisle is content with how the Pa­cific Island nations are working to­gether in the area of education for children.

Ms Belisle made the comment while speaking to the Fiji Sun on day one of the 6th Pacific Island Lit­eracy and Numeracy Assessment (PILNA) steering committee meet­ing at the Radisson Blu Resort Fiji on Denarau Island yesterday.

Fifteen Pacific Island countries were present at the meeting while the Permanent Secretary for Edu­cation, Alison Burchell represent­ed Fiji at the discussions.

“This is important because PILNA is a collaborative effort of all of the member countries and all of the decisions we take about how often PILNA has administered, what grade levels, what the content is, how we report it all of those deci­sions about the PILNA are made by this group,” she said.

“Everything we do in PILNA is done by a consensus of the coun­try so we bring people from all over the countries together to create the items.

“They do the scoring with us they facilitate it and we do all of the re­porting with them, but when the decisions need to be made, it’s the heads of systems that makes the decisions.”

She said after the two-day meet­ing, she hoped that decisions made by the group relating to the ways in improving the next round of PIL­NA would be the end result after the meeting.

“I am really happy to have the lev­el of participation of the countries and the countries that really bring in the importance that PILNA has to their education systems,” she said.

Edited by Percy Kean

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