The French education minister, Luc Chatel, has arrived in New Caledonia to sign a convention which will lead to the transfer of the running of secondary school education from France to the territory.
The transfer is in line with the 1998 Noumea Accord on greater autonomy and will come into effect in January 2012.
The annual education budget is more than 500 million US dollars, paying for 4,500 teachers and administrators.
France has undertaken to continue to carry the costs of education which amount to a third of the territorial government's budget.
Mr Chatel, who attended the opening of a high school in Paita, says schooling is at the centre of the territory's common destiny sought by the Noumea Accord.
The decolonisation process is to be completed by a referendum on independence between 2014 and 2018.
