Improving teacher quality in the Pacific region

The Commonwealth Secretariat has helped fund a meeting to bring together teacher educators, donors and partners to address the need for greater professional development of teachers in the Pacific region.

“Professional development and capacity-building of teacher educators is neither sufficiently acknowledged, nor adequately resourced,” explained Florence Malinga, Education Adviser at the Secretariat.

“The main aim of the meeting was to facilitate the resumption of networking and deliberate on the future of the Pacific Association of Teacher Educators (PATE) with a key focus on strategic planning, its funding and sustainability.”

The Commonwealth Pacific Regional Consultation Meeting of Heads of Teacher Education Institutions and Ministries of Education on the Professional Development of Teacher Educators, took place in June in Apia, Samoa. It was organised in partnership with the Institute of Education, University of the South Pacific and the Oloamanu Centre for Professional Development, National University of Samoa.

Eight Pacific countries were represented at the meeting – Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu,Vanuatu and Cook Islands. The National University of Samoa and the University of the South Pacific - two tertiary teacher education providers – also participated. Development partners included AusAID, NZAP, the Council of Pacific Education (COPE), Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS), South Pacific Board for Educational Assessment (SPBEA), UNICEF and UNESCO.

The Chief Executive Officer of the Samoa Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture, Galumalemana Nuufou Petaia, highlighted the importance of networking and the “imperative to align teacher education efforts with our teacher education programmes to achieve international goals that our own education systems are trying to embrace, such as the Millennium Development Goals, Pacific Education Development Framework and the Pacific Plan.”

Ms Malinga said the revival of PATE was one of the areas identified during the Pacific regional consultations held during 2010.

“I was overwhelmed at the level of interest generated by the 2011 meeting, particularly the attendance by the regional agencies and development partners,” she said.

Three tangible outcomes of the consultation were the development of a five-year strategic plan for PATE, finalisation of the PATE constitution and the election of an interim PATE Executive Committee.

In her closing remarks, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the National University of Samoa, Dr Emma Kruse Va’ai, emphasised the importance of teacher education to national and regional development.

She noted: “Reconvening PATE is crucial to our reappraisal of where we are and which direction we should take in order to achieve our national, regional and global goals for education."