14 Aug 2012

Better teacher training in Pacific needed says Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat

2:21 pm on 14 August 2012

The Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat says better training programmes need to be offered to early childhood teachers in the Pacific region.

This has been revealed in the Forum's baseline survey of the Pacific Education Development Framework, which concludes there has been rapid growth and national support for the early childhood education sub-sector.

The Social Policy Advisor for the Forum Secretariat, Filipe Jitoko, says although support for the sub-sector has grown, many small island communities in the 13 countries surveyed are facing serious challenges.

"The challenge of delivery of service of those remote islands is a major challenge in terms of teacher training, and also provision of resources to those islands and of course teacher quality remains a major challenge in most of the countries."

Filipe Jitoko says the Forum Secretariat is working with various agencies in the Pacific to overcome the challenges.