Post-Primary

New Hebrides Round-Up

£126,000 For New Post-Primary School In Vila

The Secretary of State for the Colonies has approved a grant of £Stg. 126,000 for the first stage of a new English-language, co educational boarding school at Vila, New Hebrides.

THE eventual capital cost of the school, which will be for post primary students, is estimated at £240,000.

Tenders have already been called from approved contractors for building stage I. The consulting architects are Messrs. Warren and Mahoney, of Christchurch. New Zealand.

When completed, the school will be the largest complex of buildings in the New Hebrides.

It is hoped that the main building will be ready for the first intake of 30 boys and girls in February next year. On completion the school will provide secondary education for 150 students.

Recruitment will start soon in the United Kingdom for a headmaster and two masters, and it is hoped they will arrive before the end of 1965. Their first duty will be to prepare a syllabus for the first year.

The children will spend the first year consolidating their primary education and preparing for four years of secondary education, during which the Cambridge Overseas School Certificate syllabus will be followed.

The school will eventually have a staff of eight—the headmaster, five masters, and two women teachers. * THE assorted Britons, Australians, New Zealanders and “opters” who make up the British community in the New Hebrides were cheered recently when the British Newsletter, the roneoed news sheet of local news issued by the British Residency in Vila, announced that in future it would appear every two weeks.

Previously, the Newsletter had been a monthly, and sometimes bi monthly, publication—in contrast to the weekly Bulletin d’lnformation

issued by the French Residency, which, besides covering the local scene, also contains a round-up of overseas news.

The more frequent appearance of the Bulletin, plus its wider coverage, had been one of the things that helped give New Hebridean Britishers the feeling that in most things, the French Administration could put on a much better show than the British. * * * WORK is expected to be com pleted at the Hotel Vate at the end of April on the construction of a terrace over the present dance floor. The terrace will be used as a dining room, as the existing dining room has been taken over by the New Hebrides Club. * * *

Anew Hebridean, George

Marakia, of Fila Island, re cently caught a dugong while fishing behind Iririki, the small island op posite Vila in Vila Harbour. Dugongs are seldom seen in Vila, or in any part of the central New Hebrides.