UK Minister Visits Nadi Airport School
United Kingdom Minister of State at the Department for Education, Nick Gibb yesterday visited Nadi Airport School, in Namaka, Nadi.
He was accompanied by British High Commissioner Melanie Hopkins and senior officials from Ministry of Education.
Mr Gibb is in the country for the 20th Commonwealth Education Ministers Meeting which is being held at Sheraton Fiji Resort on Denarau Island in Nadi.
Mr Gibb managed to visit the 17 classrooms within the school where he was able to interact with more than 700 students.
School head-teacher Marica Vukilau said it was an honour for their school to receive such a high international delegation. “The students were really happy to have one of the United Kingdom’s Members of Parliament in school, this will go down in our schools history,” she added.
Ms Vukilau said they were fortunate for this opportunity because out of all the hundreds of schools in Fiji he chose our school.
“This is the first school he visited in Fiji since arriving into the country, we can see that he had so much love for the children and the way he sat down and interacted with them, just showed how much he cares,” she said.
The school was established in 1948 by the South Pacific Air Transport Council to cater for primary education of children of expatriates’ families working at Nadi Airport. It was run by New Zealand, which operated Nadi Airport for the council.
In 1979 the ownership of the school buildings was transferred to the newly-formed Civil Aviation Authority of Fiji.