Press Release

“Do schools have dedicated staff able to provide psychological support to the students during the aftermath of the emergency, and conduct learning assessments to measure the learning loss during school closures?” KoBLE questioned.

The Kolisen Blong Leftemap Edukesen (KoBLE) Association and its members are calling on the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) to promote good governance and oversight in the education sector, particularly on school councils, and school management.

Whilst it is great to celebrate freeing ourselves from colonialism and becoming an independent sovereign nation, what have we replaced it with? Or have we even replaced it? For the Kolisen Blong Leftemap Edukesen (KoBLE) Association and its members, the question remains — how satisfied are we with the country’s performance in all levels of education, formal, informal and non-formal since independence?

All students need to understand the history of Vanuatu and how our democratic system came about and how it works. Voting is important, as is the choosing of suitable leaders, and our youth should be able to analyze the qualities of contesting candidates, looking at their support for the education system and the development of the country.

While the Government continues to progress in implementing its National Sustainable Plan (NSDP), there are still challenges and the realities of poor infrastructure and service delivery to the population of Vanuatu, especially to the 73% of the population that live in rural areas.

In Vanuatu, the National Sustainable Development Plan includes people with disabilities in several of its policy objectives relating to culture, government services and the economy. The Education Training Sector has had an Inclusive Education (IE) policy in place since 2010, and a National Disability Inclusion Policy for since 2016.

Kolisen Blong Leftemap Edukesen (KoBLE) has acknowledged the Government for easing the restriction to allow schools and learning institutions to reopen with strict conditions of COVID-19 Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).

Kolisen Blong Leftemap Edukesen (KoBLE) and its 56 network members representing Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and private institutions are raising concerns about the effectiveness of the government’s Home School Package (HSP) learning implemented on the 5th of March, now over a month ago.

In January 2020 the Government announced a new scheme, where the Vanuatu National Provident Fund (VNPF) offered VT500 million to the Ministry of Education, (MoET) to administer a loan scheme, in which members can borrow against their own retirement savings to fund their children’s (or their own) education.