Chief Executive Officer of the Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture Matafeo Falanaipupu Aiafi revealed the Ministry’s plans for this academic year to get the teachers and also the students ready before the 26th of this month when school actually starts.
He said the teachers will get to their classrooms; curriculum and everything ready before the students get back to school.
“There will be a service that will be held on the 18th of this month to bless all the teachers and also this year’s academic year,” said Matafeo.
“[And] on the 19th and the 20th the Ministry will hold a conference with the teachers to talk about some of the things that the Ministry expect for this year’s academic and then on the 21st teachers will first get back to school to prepare everything for the students.”
Matafeo said this year there are so many events happening and so the Ministry is trying to work its way around that so that schools will not be affected by those events.
“The normal plan is that we will have four terms with forty weeks and those terms will be divided into ten weeks per term,” he said.
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“However there will also be changes to accommodate events such as the Youth Games that Samoa will be hosting this year and also the All Blacks game with the Manu Samoa on July.”
So what is the main focus of the Ministry?
“The main focus that the Ministry will drive is the basic skills, the fundamental skills that children must have in order for them to progress into higher level of education.
We will be driving literacy in terms of supporting teachers, supporting programs for children.
Also the same for numeracy because these are the two fundamental areas that we will enable our children to have a well grounded foundation so they can progress to succeed in later years of education as they move up in higher levels,” said Matafeo.
Asking the CEO if there are any new changes that should be expected this year Matafeo said there will be no new changes.
“We can’t keep on changing things around because we have to do these changes in small and effective installments to make sure that it is effective and then we consolidate those changes and move on, he said.
However, we are very accommodating to those changes that our children need to keep up with, for example the use of technologies in school to make sure that our children when they exit education they have technological skills to be able to survive in this world.”
What are some of the challenges that the ministry is facing at the moment?
“One of the major challenges that the ministry is facing is the shortage of teachers, said Matafeo.
“Especially in technical areas like Science and Math that’s why our government has sponsored six scholarships for Science teachers to upgrade themselves to a Bachelor of Science Degree through the University of the South Pacific and also other university. Hopefully in 2016 these group of teachers will graduate and be able to come back and help address the problem of shortage of teachers.”
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