Fiji "Can't Pay"

For Free

Education

[portents of free, compulsory

ation for Fiji were given

: facts in May as to why the

Tnment thought it couldn’t

one. In short: Fiji couldn’t d it.

IE compulsory primary educa ion has been something that n politicians have been talking : for many years. Many can ;s stressed it during the recent lections. e of its foremost exponents is f. Madhavan, who represents the lern constituency in the Legis- Council and who is also pre t of the Fiji Teachers’ Union, y an Indian body.

May, Mr. Madhavan was chair of the union’s annual confer which was officially opened at ori, near Suva, by the Fiji for of Education, Mr. J. G. er. Mr. Rodger took the oppor i to gel on to Mr. Madhavan’s subject. He said he was un nedly opposed to free com ry education at the present stage iji’s development, more realistic approach was rsal primary education —schools 11 who wanted them. ■. Rodger asked how many Coun :andidates had had any “real of what free education involved, dded in an aside that he couldn’t rstand why international bodies proclaimed free compulsory ition a fundamental human right d regard a right as something body should be compelled to do. e Education Director said the al cost of training teachers and ing extra classrooms would be t £1 million. The recurrent would be between £1.25 million £1.5 million a year, which is uch again as Fiji will spend in ition this year, education had been free in his department would have had irovide schooling for 18,000 children in the 6-13 age group, an average of 40 pupils a er, another 450 teachers would iquired. As it cost about £3OO 'ain a teacher at the Nasinu ling College, the training cost :he extra 450 required, always ning men and women of the calibre could be found, would bout £140,000.

The additional salary bill in the first year would be £lOO,OOO (on an average starting salary of £240) and about £200,000 a year in 10 years.

The classrooms would cost another £750,000. Then there would have to be a greatly increased inspec torial staff; extra clerks in the de partment and in the Treasury to cope with pay and other personal matters, Mr. Rodger said he was supposed to collect £300,000 a year in school fees in Government schools and salary contributions in non-Govern ment schools. Under “free” educa tion that money would have to be found elsewhere. If parents no longer had to pay, the cost to the taxpayer would be, not £300,000 a year, but £BOO,OOO, and even that sum would only be enough to maintain existing primary schools in the present, often substandard condition.

Some of the candidates had sug gested that the cost could be met by an education rate. This, on a conservative estimate, would be

close to £2O a head each year. But as some people could not pay anything like that, the actual rate would be nearer to £3O than £2O.

And if the department went the whole way and made the Education Rate cover the full recurrent cost of education, and not just the extra cost of so-called “free” education the rate would have to be about £5O per head a year.

The president of the Fiji Teachers’

Association, Sakiasi Sovonivalu, re ferred to die same subject in his pre sidential address to his association's annual conference, which was held at Suva in May at the same time as the Nausori conference.

Sakiasi said that perhaps those candidates who had advocated free education had forgotten the present state of Fiji’s economy.

“Perhaps they did not realise what ‘free education’ would do to the pockets of taxpayers and consumers,” he said. “There would have been an alarming increase in income tax and Customs dues, resulting in re duced consumer spending and high prices.”