Future Challenges Of Our Education System
The enthusiasm about the pre-school week is a positive sign.
It helps to light up the interest that inspires a child to take education seriously.
The fancy costumes and the efforts that went in to promote the Early Childhood Care and Education week hopefully influences the child to focus on his or her studies.
Pre-school lays the foundation to a child’s education. The increasing funding allocation to early childhood care and education (ECCE) will strengthen education.
In the last National Budget, ECCE teachers were given pay rises while the students got free tuition.
In the 2018-2019 National Budget $2.8 million has been allocated to subsidise tuition fees of students in registered ECCE centres.
Facilities for infant schools and ECCE centres have also been given a cash boost of $500,000 to support student learning.
But all this investment will go to waste if the same momentum fails to continue to primary, secondary and tertiary levels.
The Government has created the environment, through the free tuition scheme, for this momentum to continue.
It has allocated $66.4 million to this programme for the 2018-2019 financial year. Location allowance for ECCE, primary and secondary school teachers in rural and remote areas has been provided through a $21.6 million allocation to ensure that every Fijian child regardless of geographical location is include in national development.
Vocational grants ($1.25 million) and bus fare assistance scheme ($25 million), free milk programme ($3.1 million), Special schools ($1.36 million), Special needs scholarship ($266,000), Tertiary Education Loans Scheme (TELS) ( Increase by $45 million from $205.6 million), National Toppers Scheme ($43.8 million) in addition to other initiatives, rehabilitation and development projects make the education package impressive.
The challenge for Opposition political parties, and it’s not an easy one, is to better that. SODELPA is talking about free tuition for all tertiary students. It sounds good and attractive to students and their families. But can we afford it? In New Zealand Labour Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern waved the fee tuition card and it worked wonders for the party in the general election. But they are implementing it in stages, rolled out over a number of years. If it’s implemented here it will take a big chunk of the Budget and frankly, it may not be sustainable in the long term given the size of our economy.
Sustainability is a subject of discussion in New Zealand right now because once, NZ had free university tuition. Because of the ballooning cost it had to stop it.
TELS seems to be the way to go because the students are required to pay back what they borrow. It is based on the belief that graduates will qualify, get a job and repay their loan.
The worry is if they fail to graduate and they can’t get a job after university. The loans and interest will accumulate.
In the current education revolution it is important that all stakeholders are on the same page. While the teachers are sorting out their grievances over the reforms against the Ministry of Education through the Employment Court, it is important that we must innovate to make our education system relevant.
Technological progress has made some of the ways we do things out of date. The teaching methods inevitably have to change to keep students interested and focused. A lot of information taught by teachers and lecturers can be easily accessed on internet. So the way we teach would have to be modified to make it interesting.
With more schools now exposing their students to internet, teaching will become more interactive. Students will become more analytical in their research projects.
This is the way to the future and we need to adapt to the changing education landscape. The Government has made considerable progress in setting up the infrastructure. Students in all schools, especially those in rural and maritime areas must have access to internet as part of this revolution. They need proper computer labs where they can learn information technology and online learning and research.
The reality is that a lot of business today is conducted online and it will increase. So if our education is not geared to take this onboard it could be missing out on its benefits. Chinese business magnate Jack Ma, founder and executive chair of Alibaba Group, a multinational technology conglomerate, says that the education sector is failing us – we are failing our kids. He predicts that 30 years from now most jobs will be done by robots and we will have to compete with robots in the future. Because of this is he argues we need to be teaching our kids skills that robots won’t be able to have. He gives examples of empathy, communication, collaboration, things that robots won’t be able to do.
Some call such skills as “soft skills” or “human” skills. Do our young people know how to work collaboratively?
Do they know how to empathise with others? Do they know how to evaluate different situations and contexts?
We need to extend their ability to imagine, dream and think outside the square. There are many examples of new products, services and technology that started with someone, thinking outside of the square, working hard and dreaming big. Are we encouraging our young children to do that? Do we ask them what their passions are and then give them the freedom and skills to make them realise those passions?