Introduction

The purpose of this section is to present a number of issues in education in Tonga today. The first school in Tonga was started by a Wesleyan missionary in 1828, and in the fol-
lowing years the missions explanded the school system (based mainly on English education)
until in 1876 the first Act of Parliament was passed regulating education in Tonga and it made education comulsory for all children from 7 – 16. The Education Act of 1927, consolidated in 1947, provides that every child of not less than six or more than fourteen years of age living within a distance of two miles from a government primary school shall attend that school or some other public primary school unless the child has passed Class 4. No fees are charged for the ordinary instruction given in government primary schools. The compulsory period does not cover any of the post-primary stage. In a report in 1969, the Minister of Education stated that about 27% of the students who pass through the primary schools proceed to intermediate or secondary schools.

There is still very little technical education in Tonga, and many feel that the syllabus, based largely on Australian and New Zealand examinations, is far removed from the needs of Tongan society. The selections printed below are not intended to give a complete picture of education, but only to highlight some of the ‘hot’ issues. The extract from a Peace Corps document perhaps tells more about the attitude of one volunteer than about the education system, but it does pinpoint the dangers of approaching Tongan education from a Eurpean perspective. The next series of extracts concern
the extraordinary controversy over a schoolgirl's speech on “Tongan Democracy”. There follows a short note on the Roman Catholic Church's attempt to improve community education, and finally some extracts are reproduced from the correspondence columns of the Tonga Chronicle, concerning the New Zealand Scheme of Co-operation, which clearly (and justifiably) creates a lot of resentments among Tongan teachers. The money spent on bringing and paying New Zealand teachers to teach in Tongan schools could surley be better used in providing the resources for the kind of changes needed to attune Tongan education more closely to the developmental needs of the country.