Education’s ‘balance of power’

The “balance of power” as between English and French education systems in the New Hebrides has changed in recent years.

A report to the French National Assembly in Paris by a mission of the Assembles Legal Committee which visited the islands in 1976 has revealed that, whereas in 1971, 85 French schools had 7,000 pupils and 218 English schools and 11,000, in 1975 there were 10,171 pupils attending French schools. (It had already been reported that the French in 1975 had spent the equivalent of SAS million on their New Hebridean schools system.) Reporting to the assembly on behalf of the mission, Mr Jean Gerbet declared: “It is actually the existence of two types of education, and thus two languages, which has contributed to the creation of an extremely serious con flict situation in this distant archipelago.”

The* mission’s recipe for resolving this “conflict situation”? “France could . . . establish an equilibrium between the communities by pursuing her effort in the field of education.