PRESS RELEASE (96/10)
13th October 2010
Port Moresby, PNG - The theme of the 8th Forum Education Ministers’ Meeting underway in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea is the very essence of the Pacific Plan endorsed by Forum Leaders at their meeting in Madang in 2005.
Speaking at the meeting, Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat Deputy Secretary General, Feleti Teo said: “I highly commend our host the Minister of Education for Papua New Guinea for the timely and highly relevant theme for this year’s meeting of Forum Education Ministers. The theme of ‘sustaining pacific education through regionalism’ is the very essence of the Pacific Plan.”
“it is the very objective and rationale for education ministers of the region to gather here In Port Moresby this week, as they have done so in past, to share, discuss and agree on collective initiatives or regional responses in support of and add value to their own national efforts in addressing their education development challenges,” said Mr Teo.
“It is that very pursuit of collective responses or regional responses to common development challenges that underpin the Pacific Plan. The Plan is now generally accepted as the regional framework that enunciate the regional development priorities that the region must collectively address by pooling together their resources and capacities.”
Forum Secretariat Deputy Secretary General Mr Teo added: “Education development in its many facets was considered a Pacific Plan priority and one that warrants collective and coordinated responses.”
But Mr Teo said: “The provision of education services, of course, remains and must always remain the primary responsibility and prerogative of national governments and administrations.”
Today’s agenda for the 8th Forum Education Ministers’ Meeting chaired by the PNG Minister of Education, Hon. James Marape includes:
• The progress report of the Pacific Regional Initiatives for the Delivery of Basic Education (PRIDE) Project;
• A proposed Strategy for Implementing the Pacific Education Development Framework;
• Improving Teacher Competency and Effectiveness in the Pacific;
• Update on the Development and Implementation of the Teacher and Principal Standards;
• Fast-tracking the Training of Untrained Teachers in the Pacific region;
• Extending Flexible and Distance Learning to Schools in the Pacific region;
• Proposed Strategy to Strengthen Education Planning in the region;
• Benchmarking Education Quality for Results in Pacific Education;
• Supporting Monitoring and Evaluation in Track Performance in Education in the Pacific; and
• Open Schooling as a Strategy for Second-Chance Education.
The two-day meeting will end tomorrow.
ENDS.
For media enquiries, contact Mr Johnson Honimae, the Forum Secretariat’s Public Affairs Officer on phone 675 73746587 or email: johnsonh@forumsec.org.fj or johnson.honimae@gmail.com
