Ronny Teriipaia declares in homecoming letter that he wants a school “rooted in his community”

The new school year is coming. First and second grade students will return to school on August 12. On this occasion, Minister of Education Ronny Teriipaia revealed on Thursday that The day before he was indicted for inciting racial hatredhis traditional homecoming letter. In this message he reiterated his ambition to create a school “rooted in its environment and society”.

The first line of his letter sets the tone for his vision for education, which, according to him, must be “In the service of spreading the intangible heritage of Polynesia, its language, its culture, its art…” Although primary and secondary education fall under state jurisdiction, the state is responsible for guaranteeing teachers’ salaries, while participating in the investment costs of buildings and the operating costs of school transport. The minister’s ambition is clear: he wants to promote Polynesian languages ​​in schools, a priority announced last year.

Increase in flow per hour

In 2023, Ronny Teriipaia has launched a regional action plan for languages ​​in primary education. The plan will last for five years and will continue to be deployed to provide Students’ “early and everyday learning”. “I hope that all schools, CJAs and secondary schools integrate these measures (…) I also encourage them to create moments of immersion in the Polynesian language in their school life.” To this end, the teaching time of Polynesian language and culture will be increased to three hours per week in Grade 1 and two hours per week in Grade 6. Specific assessments will be gradually implemented in CP, CE2 and CM2 to evaluate students’ level in this new subject.

However, as in the previous year, teachers find themselves once again in a battleground. To teach REO, you still have to master it. How can we train teachers who often have little or no familiarity with the language, whether from Polynesia or from mainland France, so that they can teach it effectively? On this point, the Minister indicated in his homecoming letter that new targeted training would be carried out to support school teachers in teaching these languages. However, if these measures might be sufficient for a few hours of teaching to first and sixth form students, they have proven insufficient to meet the Minister’s long-standing wish to teach specific subjects, such as mathematics, in these languages. This is even more true for university teachers, many of whom come from mainland France.

Regarding other languages, Ronny Teriipaia also stressed the importance of English in “Geographic areas where English is the primary language“. He announced that the French-English bilingual school experiment launched in Bora Bora last academic year will continue. The creation of an international French baccalaureate program in English is also under study.