First Government Teacher

For Pitcairn

Pre-Fob. Schoolhouse Goes As Well

ALTHOUGH education has been com pulsory on Pitcairn Island for many years, the island has only recently had its first official teacher appointed n nd has been given its first school house a prefabricated building, now on its way from the United Kingdom.

The school-teacher is Mr. A. W. Mover ley, of New Zealand, who is under a year’s contract to the Western Pacific High Commission, which administers Pitcairn. He and his wife and nine year-old daughter left Auckland by the “Matua” on March 24. In Fiji they will transfer to the small “Awahou” which will carry the family, plus a prefabricated house for themselves, the school, and sufficient furniture for both, to Pitcairn.

John Adams, one of the original mutineers, was the first teacher on Pit cairn. Since then education has been an intermittent affair although in more recent years most of the teaching was left .to the Seventh Day Adventist Mis sion. There never has been a school house, however. The prefabricated school and master’s residence will be something new to Pitcairn, where most of the buildings are made of pit-sawn timber.

Mr. Moverley, who has had 20 years’ teaching experience in NZ. said that he was looking forward to the experience.

He understood that there were about two dozen children, between six and 16 years, and that he would take them to what ever standard they were capable of going.