Erasing the Margins: A Case Study of Alternative Opportunities to Schools in Vanuatu

Abstract

The University of the South Pacific (USP) serves a unique region of the Commonwealth. It is a major provider of tertiary education to its twelve member countries of which each have their own individual educational curricula. These systems of education have always supported the development of academia amongst the islanders and have no doubt been the foundation of many of the region’s qualified scholars. Despite the success of these national curricula, it cannot be denied that most of these do not cater for the majority of their individual population. Many systems require a filtering of its students through various examinations at different levels of the formal educational lifetime. This has resulted in a high level of young push-outs who are almost always those from the rural areas where any further access to any form of education is a rarity. Reasons for their lack of accomplishment are numerous. It is now obvious that national curricula is not providing for the majority of its population. It is thus important that attention is brought to this situation and that some form of interference is applied. The Emalus Campus of USP, Vanuatu, caters not only for its regional students, but also for its national push-outs who hunger for another attempt at formal education. This campus has initiated the use of materials from the USP’s continuing education and foundation level in government schools and these have proven to be the better option especially for marginalized schools. It has also provided for its multilingual situation in trying to provide opportunities for all levels of peoples in the community. This paper will present the Emalus Campus situation as a case study. // Paper ID 409