EDUCATION reforms including the introduction of student-friendly subject changes are being done to ensure Fiji’s curriculum remains relevant to the changes in modern society.
This was the word from Education Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum. He made the comment while speaking to about 600 educators at the Fiji Head Teachers Association conference in Nadi on Wednesday.
“Fundamentally, one of the issues I am concerned about is the type of curriculum and syllabus that we have and that certainly needs to be addressed in a very fundamental manner,” he said.
“If you look at some of the ways some of the subjects are taught, some of the curriculum itself is actually out of touch.
“And we are talking to our development partners on how we can actually improve that, to make not only the subjects relevant to the students of 21st century Fiji, but also to make it easier for teachers to be able to teach those subject areas.
“At the moment, with the current number of teachers disinterested in science areas and physics, we will soon run out of teachers in physics and teachers in maths.
“We have already made an announcement, we are now going to have two streams of maths; we will have pure maths and, what they call in Australia, life maths.
“Not every student wants to study algorithms, they don’t have to know calculus, they can do life maths.
“This is one way of also assisting students so they don’t actually get demoralised by having to do studies or subjects they don’t need to do and also getting very low marks.”
