To achieve a better quality of education for Pacific Island countries was the aim of a meeting of the Advisory Board of the Institute of Education of the University of the South Pacific that was held at the Loumaile Lodge, Nuku'alofa, from April 28-29.

The meeting brought together Heads of Education from 13 member states, Tonga, Cook Islands, Samoa, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, PNG, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. It was also attended by Dr Esther Williams the USP Deputy Vice Chancellor, Dr Akanisi Kedayate the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Law and Agnes Kotoisuva the Director of the Human Resources and Registry office.

Tonga's Minister of Education Hon Dr Viliami Palefau in his opening address said that participants were there for a common purpose, "to discuss how IOE can help Pacific countries meet development needs and strategies in education which is for many is a priority area."

He said no one knows better about our educational needs and programs in our individual countries and in the region than the Heads of Education present and he strongly urged the board to keep the ultimate goal of education in their deliberations; "for children to acquire basic skills needed to enrich their lives hence expand their opportunities in society."

"I believe we can all use IOE as a vehicle to develop quality education in Pacific education systems to ensure that students enrolled at USP are of best calibre and dynamic change agents for improved development."

2000 graduates

He noted USP now had alumni's of some 40,000 members with about 2,000 students graduating each year. "This holds great potential for IOE to use graduates for research work and training throughout the region as sustaining quality research is not easy to provide policy direction for educational development," he said.

The Institute of Education (IOE) was relocated to Tonga over a year ago with Dr 'Ana Taufe'ulungaki as its Director.

Dr Taufe'ulungaki said during the two days of deliberations, the board would be looking at its Strategic Plan for the next five years, its new education initiatives and looking at perspective donors since it had been self-funding since 2000.

She said one important aspect of the board meeting was that they would listen to presentations made by individual member states on what their educational needs and priorities are, which the institute could assist with and incorporate into their working plan.

'Ana said that at the IOE's last board meeting in 2002, the USP introduced a new policy for institutes to fund their own operations. Since then IOE has developed to become a quality research and consultation institution in the region and their work included conducting research and consultation work like the Community Consultation with the Tonga Police that saw the compilation of the Tonga Police Strategic Plan 2009-13.

"We want to grow and expand our work, programs and our services particularly in our priority areas of advice, research, training and publication and this meeting would pave the way for that," said 'Ana.