Praneeta Prakash 
[Source: Parliament of the Republic of Fiji / Facebook]
The Ministry of Education has launched a fast-track recruitment strategy by identifying and recruiting potential teachers directly from high schools and fast-tracking them into classrooms.
Permanent Secretary Ratu Meli Nacuva highlighted this before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defense when questioned about the significant drop in the number of teachers in secondary schools.
We’re trying to be proactive now by actually going to the high schools, where we pick our teachers and then train them, so that we can fast track them into the, but then what you’re doing is you’re not allowing them to grow the normal growth rate that the former teachers had, that went through proper grooming and proper training, and then reintroducing them into schools.
Education Ministry Data Manager, Rubina Ravasua, says the Ministry is also exploring improvements in teacher welfare, retention incentives, and salary reviews.
We cannot compete with developed countries in terms of salaries, but the ministries put in place a lot of strategies like incentives for retention purposes, and we continue to work on that, and we’re working at looking at specifically on teacher welfare policies, and there are a lot of other initiatives like salary increase
Ravasua adds that teacher exits peaked in 2023 at around 1,896 however, the numbers declined last year.
For now the Education Ministry assures that they have sufficient teachers across all schools in Fiji.
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