LEARNING CRISIS IN THE SOLOMONS

by Milika Nation

In the Solomon Islands, 75% of the population is under 35 years of age. As you can imagine, we have quite a large, young population who are in need of jobs, who are in need of possibilities for their future. Education is probably one of the routes in which they can go to help them live a fulfilled life.

The way in which we deliver education, especially in secondary school, is exam-heavy. In order to secure your place in school, you have to be able to pass all your exams and achieve the entrance score that is applied by all secondary schools. If you don’t get any of the entrance scores then you have to drop out of school. And unfortunately, we have only two vocational schools running in Solomon Islands. Otherwise there are no avenues for students or for young people, which is a major problem at the moment, last year alone, we had 78,000 students drop out of secondary school. A lot of them did not reach the pass marks.

Many of the schools were built during colonization and they haven’t been maintained since. A lot of these schools haven’t had that general maintenance needed. The population is growing, but these schools haven’t changed, so they’re quite overrun with student population.

I know for example at St Joseph’s Tenaru there can be up to 60 to 70 students in one class with one teacher, which is double the ratio that’s acceptable in Australia. Where a dorm could fit 20 students at one point is now housing 60 or 70.