Need to Review Education Act 1966: Radrodro

There is a need to review the Education Act 1966, says the Minister for Education, Aseri Radrodro.

He made the comment yesterday while responding to questions about the increasing school dropouts in the country.

Mr Radrodro said the Act limited the ministry, teachers and its committee to come after students who weren’t educated or dropped out of school.

He said the review was one of the topics apart from the seven discussed during the Denarau Education Summit in Nadi last year.

“The Act is limiting the roles and responsibilities of the MOE for those students who come to school. When they leave school, they don’t become our responsibilities,” Mr Radrodro said.

“It comes to another administration department to see that they come to school.”

Mr Radrodro said school dropouts weren’t something new, it had always been an ongoing issue for past governments.

He said the solutions were not something that could happen overnight either.

He said it wasn’t only the responsibility of Government, but a collective co-operation with other stakeholders.

“It will require a lot of thinking and collaboration, meetings with stakeholders; it’s not only the responsibility of the MOE or the teachers to be answerable to school dropouts, it is the responsibility of parents, guardians, the Vanua and the Lotu because we are all stakeholders that need to work together- it takes a whole community, a village to raise a child,” he said.

“So, when one student fails to attend school, it is the responsibility of those in the settlements, villagers, to bring it to the attention of teachers and parents that these students aren’t attending school.

“Otherwise, teachers will not know what is happening causing a gap which needs to be improved to mitigate in working towards stopping those gaps.”

Repeal of no transfer policy 

Mr Radrodro said although further discussion on this repeal was needed, the ministry noted the introduction of Vocational Technical Institute to cater for students who do not excel in academic studies.

He said this was something they saw in New Zealand during their recent visit.

“If you are to keep students educated, there needs to be a lot of discussions with stakeholders with all those suggestions and also the current issue that we have,” he said.

“The important question we need to ask is when they don’t progress further in education, where does MOE expect students to go. That is why we introduced the Vocational Technical Institute Training for slow academic students.

“Our recent visit to New Zealand saw that this was offered to students, they can take up VT in constructions, catering, auto-mechanics while attending school.

“Apart from just concentrating on their academic education; we must give students every opportunity, platform to allow them to better equip themselves and prepare for the future.”

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