BY LORETTA BRIGIDIA MANELE

IN its annual 2017 report, the education ministry shares three change pathways of how they think education improvement will happen amidst its current National Educational Action Plan (NEAP) 2016-2020 timeframe.

Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development (MEHRD) explains that these pathways is also what they refer to as their “Theory of Change” (ToC) which provides the basis for planning, monitoring, evaluation and reporting by clearly describing expected results of what and how the ministry contributed to the results more on, what they will measure and report.

Under the theory of Change (ToC), MEHRD’s three change pathways are; Increased Access to Education, Improved Quality of Education and Improved Management of Education.

MEHRD expressed that it maintains a strong commitment to all female and male students having a safe and equitable access to complete their education irrespective of social, economic or other status.

In addition, as stated, the ministry implements a range of activities to understand what stops children commencing, continuing and completing their education.

“Understanding the ‘blockers’ to access creates an opportunity for evidence based decision-making regarding future access related strategies,” said MEHRD.

To top that off, the ministry mentioned that it will also focus on the implementation of infrastructure activities and reframing pre-primary years into early childhood education as it believes that this will contribute to children’s completion of basic education (inclusive of PPY) and an increased number of children completing 13 years of education.

In the case of “Improved Quality of Education”, MEHRD states that this is a priority area during the first phase of NEAP.

“Developing and implementing a new curriculum, reshaping the approach to student assessment and realigning teaching strategies to focus on the child will form the basis for achieving improvements,” said MEHRD.

As for the third pathway, “Improved Management of Education”, it is reported that the education ministry engages in a collaborative process with education partners to improve education management at the school, education authorities and national level (MEHRD).

MEHRD emphasised that improvements in education management are inter-connected between the three levels of education management to which sound education management provides the foundation for increasing access to and improving the quality of education.

BY LYNTON AARON FILIA

PRIVILEGE to tertiary education tends to be entrenched in a privilege belonging to the elite, a report shows.

According to the United Nation Development Programme’s 2018 report on Solomon Islands Youth Status compiled by Dr Anouk Ride, tertiary education tends to entrench elite privilege and gender and other disadvantages.

The report highlighted that every year, students complain about scholarships being allocated not according to merit but to elite and kin-based privileges.

The system tends to disadvantage women, it said.

Besides, in 2017, only 28 percent of government scholarships for school graduates (26 out of 91 pre-service scholarships) were awarded to women.

Respondent recommends there is a need to reform the scholarship system to ensure access according to merit, match scholarships with government and industry needs, and foster effective spending of large financial allocation.

In addition, at the postgraduate level the report stated that few men or women have the opportunity to study.

For Solomon Islanders only 25 currently possess a PhD, which is very low compared to neighbouring countries such as Fiji, and the government stated in 2016 that it wants to support high-achieving tertiary students into post-graduate degrees, it said.

However, access to education is only part of the story; there are many tertiary-educated people in the country who are unable to find work in their field after their studies.

Scholarships have tended to focus on the civil service while neglecting industry needs, resulting in a shortage of finance and managerial staff in most sectors.

The tourism and cultural industries, for example, suffer from a lack of managerial, promotional and marketing expertise – skills needed to professionalise services and export cultural products.

On the other of the spectrum, only one in six school leavers find paid employment. There is an acute lack of vocational and life-skills training, the report stated.

It also stated that rural training centres in the country report high demand for the less than 3,000 places offered each year.

Meanwhile, increasing population numbers have resulted in the current situation where numbers of vacancies in this sector are few and cannot meet the demand for employment of school leavers.