I stood speaking with a teacher and watching the children play touch rugby when a boat neared the beach.
Several of the children stopped what they were doing and raced each other to reach the boat first. It was Friday afternoon and classes were over for the week.
The boat had come to take those students who lived in the villages on the opposite side of Batiki Island back home for the weekend.
Batiki Island’s four villages all turn to Batiki District School for their children’s futures, the only school on the island.
But for the further villages of Manuku and Naigani this means children as young as kindergarteners must board at the school from Monday to Thursday, returning home after school every Friday.
Eager to get home, the children ran to the boarding facilities, dragged their belongings over to the boat and hopped in. It would only take them about ten minutes to return home and this was a journey they’d made countless times in their young lives already, but their excitement was palpable, nonetheless.
On Monday they would return, accompanied by a caregiver. Each week the parents of the children making the journey would rotate which one of them would join the students as a carer for the week. But for the others, it was parting with family for five days.
Many mainland parents cannot imagine having to part with their young child for most of the week, but for those on Batiki Island, there is no other option. It is not a matter of preference or convenience such as willingly placing a child in a boarding school might be for a mainland family.
Young children living away from home for most of the week is no easy decision on the part of parents and certainly not a simple ask of the children themselves.
But the students of Batiki District School return home to their parents’ arms each weekend. Once they graduate primary school, the situation only becomes more difficult.
There is no high school on the island.
At the cusp of their teen years, the children of Batiki Island leave the home they’ve known their whole lives. Barefooted walks on the beach surrounded by the homes of friends and relatives are replaced with the bustle of towns and cities and hundreds of strangers at every turn.
It is a whole new world for the teens and many of them go through the experience alone. For some, the excitement of moving to the mainland wanes rather quickly.
New to the troubles faced by city children and eager for acceptance, some of these children are vulnerable to peer pressure and others still are simply homesick and prone to letting their grades slip.
Many children from Batiki thrive and find success, returning as adults to help uplift their home island. But those that struggle with the change and culture shock thrown at them so early in their lives can feel like they were set up to fail.
But the solution is not as simple as opening a high school on the island. The existing primary school, despite being the only one and having the support of the people of the whole island, has no shortage of operational struggles.
The school staff sat with me one afternoon to share their challenges upon my request.
Their devotion to the school evident in their words, they spoke of having to walk to the next village for water during seasons of low rainfall. They spoke of the privileges mainland students have over their students in terms of moving with the times.
“This is the 21st century and all work these children will want to do will require them to use technology. We can’t even offer these children a computer class,” they said.
But the lack of access goes down to the basics; story books, textbooks, educational and developmental toys, all of these are a boat ride or more away if they are even within budget in the first place.
But this group of adults assigned to prepare the children of Batiki for the outside world are as dedicated as they come.
With access, resources, and sometimes hope severely limited, these educators strive to provide the children of Batiki with the best quality education they can. And they seem to succeed despite their great challenges.
A quick conversation with the students of Batiki District School will reveal their intelligence, their resilience, their dreams of future success.
And as these young children part with their loved ones time and time again to pursue an education, it perhaps falls to the rest of us to help uplift them and provide them the same opportunities and access all children deserve.
