Theme “Innovations for Educational Resilience.”
Excellencies
Distinguished participants
Ladies and gentlemen
I am pleased to join this important gathering of champions for educational resilience. I thank the Commonwealth of Learning for the opportunity to participate in this year’s Pan Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning and to present specifically, on the sub-theme: Building resilience.
- Education systems, in all the small islands developing states and especially those most vulnerable of the Commonwealth, regularly face disruptions due to natural disasters, health crises and conflict situations. For small islands developing states, ‘building resilience’ focuses on how to build a greener, fairer future within the context of climate change and education.
- Samoa’s commitment to resilience, is reflected in how we have situated it within the context of our national development strategy, the “Pathway for the Development of Samoa (PDS)” which articulates the priorities that will shape Samoa’s development for the next five years premised on the key pillars for sustainable development.
- As well the national plan speaks to the central theme: of “empowering communities, build resilience, and inspire growth”. Realisation of this commitment will pave the way for the achievement of our longer-term vision of “fostering social harmony, safety, and freedom for all”.
- Social development sits at the forefront of our national efforts and our Government will forge ahead with measures to build capacities, minimize vulnerabilities, and provide equal access to opportunities. These building blocks for the pursuit of long, healthy and fulfilling lives depend on there being a sustainable and diversified economy that promotes shared prosperity for and within our communities.
- While outcomes are essential for the effectiveness of planning, the options in pursuit of those outcomes are equally as important. Hence, protecting people’s rights, ensuring the integrity of governance systems, and securing partnerships that can benefit Samoa are critical. Environmental conservation and sustainability remain crucial in building resilience, and we will strengthen measures towards climate change mitigation, adaptation, and disaster risk management. In parallel, we will invest in affordable, resilient, and well-maintained infrastructure, so providing the platform upon which overall sustainable development can be pursued.
- Investing in our people has been the foundation of our national development journey since gaining independence 60 years ago. Consistently prioritizing the development of our education sector over the years, saw access improve significantly. However, ensuring quality and inclusive education remains a challenge. But whatever advances we have made, the climate related natural disasters continue to reverse some of these hard earned gains.
- The COVID19 pandemic added further weight to the burden of challenges we were already struggling with. The issues of learning loss due to school closures has been critical for Samoa. In fact, in November 2019, Samoa declared its first ever public health State of Emergency (SOE) following a wide scale measles outbreak. The SOE lasted six weeks with significant impact on the population, education and the health care system. The SOE meant early closure of all schools that year. This also led to a contraction of economic activities prior to the COVID19 lockdowns.
- Samoa was still recovering from the measles outbreak when it had to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic threat. In just over two months since the SOE for the measles epidemic was lifted, Samoa declared another State of Emergency on 21st March 2020, which saw the closure of our international borders and also schools. We reopened our borders just last month on 1st August 2022 with the achievement of high vaccination rates across all age groups from 5 years upwards. We built resilience through an intensive vaccination program well supported by the communities and enhanced access to vaccines with the help of our development partners. Thus, for our children and people, the disruptions to education have been ongoing since the end of 2019 with the measles epidemic.
- In response to school closures, shortly after the pandemic hit, the Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture offered online distance educational resources as well as television and radio programmes for early childhood education as well as primary and secondary students. The education sector remained a priority in our COVID 19 sector wide response, thus it benefited from the reallocation of national and donor resources with huge investments to promote and ensure effective remote learning.
- COVID19 hastened the upgrading and improvement needed for e-learning. Most notable was the fact that the lockdowns intensified the need and heavy reliance on technology worldwide as well as create new learning challenges. These included limited access to online learning materials for some with poor internet connections, lack of access to devices, lack of knowledge and skills on the use of technology and the inhibitory cost of internet access.
- The closed borders also impacted on many students already awarded scholarships or planned to attend tertiary education overseas. Many promising future engineers, doctors and scientists, postponed their tertiary education or were forced to reassess options based on what was available locally. This also raised questions on the need for more investment in our national universities and institutions, and the limited options available for Samoans.
Ladies and Gentlemen
- Our experience with COVID19 and our ongoing fight with climate change and its impacts on our people and infrastructure; reinforces our conviction on the importance of technology and open, distance, and online learning for providing access to quality education. Technological innovations will be key to building resilient education systems, but for a SIDS like Samoa, the best technological innovations will be those that are affordable, accessible and easy to use.
- There also needs to be policy interventions and a tailored approach to suit the different circumstances, to avoid uneven access but ensure inclusivity and more opportunities for all. With the rapid change in technology and the many global challenges, we will need education systems that can evolve with our circumstances and can effectively anticipate, respond and adapt to challenges such as natural disasters or pandemics. We convince ourselves that technology is one of the means by which to build resilience in order to “adjust and recover from these changes” – in what is now “the new normal” that we live in. However, the heavy reliance on technology also exacerbates the social and digital divides.
- Samoa’s pathway for development is dedicated to empowering communities, building resilience and inspiring growth. Our focus is for quality education and ensuring that all persons access equal opportunities to learning and development. We have learnt that building resilience requires a multimodal approach with the use of print, tv, radio, online and offline platforms which supplement each other but in an integrated way, so that no child is “left behind”.
- In addition to online platforms, we promote strong partnerships between the government, churches and private schools through the provision of grants to support an extensive network of educational facilities across Samoa. In partnership with international partners such as COL, our National University of Samoa institutionalized Technology Enabled Learning and worked with a Samoan NGO (METI) to bring healthy living and life-skills training for example, to 25 villages in Samoa. Partnerships are key to resilient education systems.
- We also need Education systems that continue to provide opportunities for all age groups, and respond to the skills and knowledge needs of populations throughout their evolving life-cycles.
- In Samoa, climate resilience has been mainstreamed across all sectors including integration into the school curriculum from ECE to secondary level as well as a Disaster and Energy Climate Change course at the National University of Samoa, with certificates on sustainable energy and climate change and disaster risk management.
- Quality and resilient education throughout life helps people to be more concerned about the environment and to learn how to protect it. People with more education learn how to lower their negative impact on the planet by managing better their consumption, production, and trade. Education can encourage people to use energy and water more efficiently and recycle household waste
- The Ocean we live in has provided our island communities with their cultural and historical identity and attachment since time immemorial. Pacific peoples rely on the ocean for food, income, culture, and recreation that are so important to the Pacific way of life. The Ocean is core to our way of life and hence building resilience means maintaining and preserving this valuable heritage that we are custodians of, and ensure sustainable management for the benefit of our present and future generations
- Despite our best efforts to sustainably manage the ocean, climate-change driven impacts such as ocean acidification and confronting the scourge of marine and plastic pollution are among a number of serious threats to the health and resilience of our shared ocean. Proactive promotion of the climate change-oceans nexus through school curricula builds resilience.
- Samoa joins its Pacific neighbours in calling for ambitious emissions reductions to meet the 1.5 degrees Celsius promise of the Paris Agreement. Nationally we have launched our Ocean Strategy and Climate Change policy which provide the overarching framework for us to reconstruct our approach in addressing our vulnerabilities and focus on leveraging the interdependence of social economic and natural systems in generating opportunities.
- The Samoa Knowledge Society Initiative has been developed with the belief that access to information and knowledge are prerequisites for building inclusive knowledge societies. Lifelong learning is one of the foundational pillars of a knowledge society. This initiative will help to promote lifelong learning for teachers, education policy makers and students of all ages.
- Leadership and financing will always be crucial to educational resilience. Innovations need financing and investments, political leadership ensures prioritization. But leadership in the different fields also means dedication to transformation of education. I believe many of you here this week, are leaders in your fields. I am confident the innovative ideas, solutions, technologies and partnerships to be showcased and discussed, will help build stronger education systems but more importantly, resilient commonwealth communities. Samoa is eager to benefit from the solutions you bring today, for a better tomorrow.
- Lastly, I wish to take this opportunity to convey our sincere appreciation to the Commonwealth of Learning for its enduring support to Samoa in the areas of curriculum development, ICT in learning using multimodal platforms, transborder qualifications, skills for work recovery and assessment. Of note is the support in technology enabled learning which facilitated resilience building and ensuring learning continuity during lock downs and sudden closures of schools. As well COL continues to support us in teacher training support and skills for work.
- I wish you all fruitful and rewarding discussions over the next few days.
Soifua
