My name is Kre William, I am the School Principal of Banban [Primary] School.
Banban School has classes from pre-school, kindy, up to Year 8.
We have around 426 students and we have 15 teachers at the school.
Learning about the new curriculum development, the professional development, the school has
seen a lot of improvement compared to the [previous] curriculum.
These are some improvements that I find in my school.
One is that the students read any books given in Bislama [a national language of Vanuatu]
The students even read words in English, one to two letter words, to three letter words,
the students can read them.
Another thing is the students, when the teacher is presenting their work in the classroom,
writing instructions for that lesson, students read it before the teacher even completes
the instructions on the blackboard.
And the students are happy to do their work.
Even when they get home to their parents, when they discuss homework issues with their
parents, the parents are happy to discuss because some parents feel that they understand
the language [Bislama].
Like as before [with English as the medium of instruction] they [the parents] do not
understand and when kids brought homework home they just don’t bother to help the
students.
But [now] when they bring the homework home, when [the parents] read they know what the
students want [to do] with their homework.
Another thing is, when marking the students’ report and the teachers are presenting the
reports, I find that all the students want to be first [in the class].
They all want to be first in their performance.
They [also] perform much better than they did two years ago. And another point is that
Two to three years ago, students used to write two to three sentences only.
But at this time, they can write a story, a full page story, from beginning to end.
It’s very challenging, and it brings joy and tears when you read their stories and
imagining that during your time [when she was a child] you couldn’t write that much,
but at this time the students can write that much.
With the new curriculum, schools need more resources to support what’s happening inside.
We need to help the teachers as they are implementing it.
I believe they have some areas where they need to improve, even though they have been
trained, but we have to continue to support them in their teaching of this new curriculum.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
And if you could make one improvement to the system, one change, is there anything you would
put on the top of your list?
The school has to communicate with the parents, help the parents to understand what is happening
inside the school.
Help them to learn more, to know more, about the new structure that is being carried out.
And I believe helping them [understand] will improve the students.
[With] the students, we understand each other, we [teachers] cannot hide anything.
So if the parents know more of this [the reforms] I think the students will do even better.
Tank yu tumas.