EXPECT changes in the Ministry of Education, including a beefed up human resources department and a revamped staffing structure and policy development.
This was the word from the ministry’s permanent secretary Alison Burchell.
She made the comments while addressing more than 200 business executives at the Fiji Commerce and Employers Federation’s Top Executives conference yesterday.
“There is going to be a change in the structure of the industry; you would have seen advertised the 58 posts in our human resources department,” she said.
“At the moment, we have teachers doing HR, we have teachers doing asset monitoring, we have teachers doing all sorts of things that they are not qualified to do, through no fault of their own — that was the system.”
“We need to up our game. “Education is the foundation of a lot of the things we do in society; if we don’t up our game then downstream there is going to be a problem.
“We need to be looking now at a detailed staffing structure and we need to make sure that everything is properly integrated.
“We are going to be doing a new strategic plan, we want it to be forward looking, we want it to be inclusive and we want to be sure that everyone is involved in that process.
“At the end of the day, we want to be preparing students for a place in the workforce — whether it’s in the private sector, NGO sector, donor agency sector or in the public service — for 20 to 25 years’ time. “In order for us to do that, we need to start planning now.”
