Through the commitments the Government has made to international conventions and declarations, in particular those outlined below, the Government has also recognized the following national goals in relation to education.

Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)

Tuvalu ratified the CRC on 22 September 1995, thereby, making a commitment to the child’s right to education. Article 28 of CRC establishes that right. Education is recognised to be essential for all children. The article stresses the right must be achieved on the basis of equal opportunity". This in summary includes:

Making primary education compulsory and available free to all;

Promoting the different forms of secondary education and vocational education;

Making higher education accessible to all;

Making educational and vocational information readily available; and

Taking measures to encourage regular attendance at schools and reducing dropout rates.

6.1 Early Childhood care and development (ECD)

Table 1. Pre-schools Enrolment and Staffing 1998

Source: Ministry of Education & Culture, Funafuti, Tuvalu

This table shows high participation of children in pre-school learning.

It also demonstrates teacher training problems.

Table 2 :Source: Ministry of Education & Culture, Funafuti, Tuvalu

Graph 1: Source: Ministry of Education & Culture, Funafuti, Tuvalu

Graph 2

Source: Ministry of Education & Culture, Funafuti, Tuvalu

 

 

 

 

 

Indicator 1: Gross enrolment ratio in early childhood development programmes: Analysis : 100% in enrolment in Early Childhood Development was achieved in 1994 but 9.5% ofthe official age group (3-5 years) did not enrol in Early Childhood Development in 1998.

Table 3: Percentage of new entrants to Grade 1

Indicator 2: Percentage of new entrants to Grade 1 who have attended some form of organised early childhood development program.

Analysis : 100% of all new entrants to Grade 1, in both years, 1994 and 1998 have attended some form of pre-school education.

The following are some of the major constraints, which the Ministry of Education is currently addressing to improve the present situation of pre- schools in Tuvalu:

shortage of trained pre-school teachers.

proper classrooms and storage facilities

shortage of school supplies

In Tuvalu, education is now compulsory and all children aged 6 - 15 years are in school. Children commence in year 1 at Primary Schools and work through to the end of Year 8 at which time they proceed on to the National Secondary School. Prior to this, there used to be two secondary schools, one was owned and operated by the Tuvalu Christian Church (EKT) and the other by Government. In 1998, the Church handed over the EKT School to Government. Because of the very high costs involved in running both schools independently, the two schools had been merged into one big secondary school for the whole nation.

Primary education starts from the age of 6 to 13. In other words, all children in Tuvalu aged 6 -13 are provided with primary education. Primary school education is free and under government’s new arrangement, students who fail their end of year examinations at years 9,10 and onwards to Year 13 of secondary education are given one chance to repeat without being pushed out of the system. This means that at the end of free and compulsory education, students are allowed to repeat if they fail to reach the minimum-passing Grade but students’ school fees are, of course, the responsibilities of parents concerned

Source: Ministry of Education & Culture, Funafuti, Tuvalu

Given the above overall primary school roll of 1811 students, it is estimated that there should be 93 qualified teachers to be engaged in primary teaching. Up to 1998, the number of qualified teachers has risen to 65. To make up the number of qualified teachers required, government is sending 5 to 7 new students every year to Teacher Training Colleges abroad to do their Diploma qualifications in primary school teaching. Beginning as from 1999, selected primary school teachers have also been sent to do their Bachelor of Education Primary at the University of the South Pacific. These teachers are expected to teach at Junior Secondary level after completing their studies. It is expected that by the year 2003, qualified teachers will staff all schools.

Primary Education

Government has been very instrumental in meeting its national EFA goals on primary education to make it compulsory to all students aged 6-15 years of age. All children under the compulsory age groups are required by law to attend school. Violation of this regulation will result in parents paying monetary penalties to government. To improve the quality of education in primary schools, all teachers since 1990 have undergone some form of in –country upgrading training programmes and some have gone for further training at overseas. To provide quality education in primary schools, huge financial assistance has been secured from overseas donors such as the French Government, European Union, Japan and Canada in relation to Tuvalu principal donors namely Australia and New Zealand. Out of Government budgetary allocation to Primary schools provisions are made to meet salaries of primary school teachers and all primary schools supplies annually. Government budgetary allocation is reflected in all its annual budgets.

            Disabled

The Red Cross provide home visits on Funafuti. This support needs strengthening.

Instructional resource materials: - In the past there had been shortages of resource materials in our schools for both teachers and students but in the past three years The Government has made the effort to provide adequate supply of resource materials for teachers and students in all schools. Likewise new libraries has been build in every school and textbooks have been supplied to every student in every class in the primary and the secondary schools

Curriculum: This has been one of the constraints in implementing the EFL/EFA policies effectively in the past. There is no curriculum developed in Tuvalu either for the secondary or primary schools in Tuvalu. Those being used now are borrowed curriculums from different countries.

However, with the support of an Australian project we were able to develop[ Science, Health Science and Business Study curriculums for the primary schools up to class 8. Curriculum for English and Mathematics are also in the progress of being completed by the end of 1999.

The Government of Tuvalu has plans to establish a Curriculum Development Unit to write up subject curriculums for Tuvalu schools, from primary to Secondary, within the Ministry of Education by the end of 1999. It is anticipated that by the year 2001, Tuvaluan students would be using subject curriculum developed in their own country instead of using borrowed ones.

Graph 3

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: Ministry of Education & Culture, Funafuti, Tuvalu

Analysis: Comparison between 1994 and 1998 rolls show that the survival rates in Grade 10 was 40% in 1994 and more than 60% in 1998. This shows that more and more children are retained in school now than have been before.

Indicators 3 & 4: Apparent (Gross) and Net Intake

Note on Table 5: 1. n.a. Not available, 2. Note that GDP is within the range of 5-8 millions added  to each year

Table 7: Source: Ministry of Finance, Funafuti, Tuvalu

Graph 4

Source: Ministry of Finance, Funafuti, Tuvalu

Graph 5

Note: GDP – Not GNP as on above graph

Source : Ministry of Finance, Funafuti, Tuvalu

Analysis: The wide fluctuation over the years in this percentage of funds allocated by the Ministry of Education to primary education as well as a percentage of GNP may be due to a number of factors:

changes in the policies of the Ministry of Education towards primary education which may be the result of regular changes in the leadership of the Ministry; the changes in Government resulting in the changes to its budgetary commitment to education the changes in  in of the interest on Tuvalu’s Trust Fund in Development.

Note: GDP – Not GNP as on above graph

Graph 6: Source: Ministry of Finance, Funafuti, Tuvalu

Indicators 9 & 10: Number of Certificated teachers in Primary Schools.

Table 8:

Analysis: Over the years there seems to be a slight increase in the number of qualified teachers in primary schools. This is due to the fact that there are teachers leaving the teaching profession to work in other Government departments, going to Nauru or migrating to other countries. The number of student teachers graduating each year some times fall short of the number of teaches leaving the profession.

Indicator 11: Pupil-teacher ratio in primary education

Table 9:

Analysis: The number of teachers above includes both certificated and uncertificated teachers.

Indicator 12: Repetition rates by grade

Analysis: Repetition rates in primary schools is zero. Students move from one grade to the next by automatic promotion.

Indicator 13 : Survival rate to Grade 10

Table 10: Grades

Analysis: The survival rate is 100% during the first two years in primary education but it tends to fluctuate a little and when children reach Grade 7 to 10 the rate of survival tends to decrease. The results shown in Grades 8 – 10 are unrealistic despite the fact that there are a few students who drop out and migrate to other Pacific countries.

Indicator 15: Percentage of pupils who master basic learning competencies.

There was no data available for this indicator.

Indicators 16, 17 & 18: Literacy rates of population aged 15-24 and 15 years old and over, and Literacy Gender Parity Index.

No data was available but a high rate of literacy of up to 99.8% of the population aged 15-25 age group and 15 years and over are literate.