Secondary school students in the rural and maritime areas will benefit from new textbooks donated by Fijians residing in New Zealand.

A consignment of nine thousand books with a total value of over $33,000NZD have been donated by the Fiji Association in Auckland.
The books were officially handed over to the Minister for Education, Premila Kumar, by the Deputy New Zealand High Commissioner to Fiji, Michelle Podmore, today.

According to Podmore, these books are especially important for rural schools in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“This consignment consists of 9000 New Zealand Certificate Educational Achievement or NCEA resource books in a range of subjects for secondary schools including areas like English and maths. These books can be used for revision and preparations for examinations.”

Education Minister Premila Kumar says she is grateful for the generous donation by the Fiji Association in Auckland, which will further strengthen the government’s free textbooks initiative.

Kumar says the books will be mainly for the students in rural and maritime areas, as they do not have as much access to libraries as students in urban areas do.

“We provide free textbooks to all our students around the country but the additional textbooks that’s given to us by the New Zealand High Commission will surely add as a set of reading materials which students need when they do their assignments.

Established in the 1970s, the Fiji Association in Auckland has actively assisted Fiji in the past three decades and has been steadfast in assisting Fiji whenever it is affected by natural disasters with the donation of books to affected schools.

The Association continues to work in collaboration with the New Zealand High Commission in Fiji to support Fiji’s education sector.