Education Overview
According to the Marshall Islands Ministry of Education there are 75 public and 27 private elementary schools in the Marshall Islands. Approximately 8,000 students attend public schools and 2,200 attend private schools. The Republic of the Marshall Islands employs about 850 teachers to educate students in their public schools (we do not have specific teacher numbers for private schools). There are six public and fourteen private secondary schools in all of the Marshall Islands. These enroll around 300 students combined. That makes a total of twenty secondary schools and 34 atolls/island. Although school is mandatory, in order for some students to attend secondary education they will need to move to another atoll and live with extended family for several years. While there are vocational technical programs for secondary students, the programs are scattered and not organized in any fashion. Schools in the Marshall Islands run on a similar schedule to the United States (they modeled their calendar after ours) with 180 days of instruction and summers off from June – August.
As of now you do not need a degree of any sort to teach at a public school in the Marshall Islands, just a high school diploma. Thanks to new Ministry of Education regulations teachers in the Marshall islands will need to have a teaching certificate by 2016, but the private COOP school we attended is accredited through the U.S. and requires a bachelor’s degree to teach there. The Ministry of Education has also begun testing its educators to see where improvements can be made from the top down. It found that only 25% of its educators are proficient at English. English is taught as a single class each day from kindergarten-2nd grades, and is taught full time in the classroom from 3rd grade on up. It also found that even fewer teachers could pass the math assessment. In 2005 only 6/10 students were below the standard in English and a similar ratio in Marshallese, while 7/10 students were below in numeracy. One of the great things about our trip is that we were able to meet elementary and high school teachers, teacher’s aides, principals college professors, instructors and staff. One of the bad things about our trip was the timing of the trip, the grant specified the trip be taken during the summer months when schools were out and teachers were either off campus or off island. We did learn a lot about education in the Marshall Islands, however, we certainly did not learn everything. The next sections are devoted to what we did learn about Marshallese school students, classrooms, structure, calendar, materials and perspective. |
Public Primary School
The Ministry of Education oversees all of the public schools. Each school day is structured to give each subject the necessary amount of time and an hour lunch break in the middle of the school day. Lunches are not provided to the students and most walk home to have lunch, then return for the rest of the school day. The curriculum is set by the Ministry of Education and are standard on all atolls/islands of the Marshall Islands. Classrooms were similar in size to those in the states with bookshelves, chalkboards, alphabet listings in English above the chalkboards and plastic bins holding colorful manipulative cubes waiting to be counted or sorted. There was no air conditioning in the room we visited which was a new $200,000 building funded by the government of Japan, but the east and west walls of the room consisted of mostly large windows that allowed for a constant cool breeze through the space.
The school we visited, the Delap Elementary School, taught four sections of K-6th grade education. The Ministry of Education made physical education mandatory in all of the Marshall Island schools. However, music and art were the responsibility of the classroom teachers. Similar to U.S. education, the students were required to bring their own materials and unused supplies were kept from year to year to be recycled when needed. The principal told us it was the responsibility of the classroom teacher to make education exciting so the students will want to attend and show up on time, but if there is a problem with attendance he does go to the student's houses to be sure everything is alright. Although fairly new to the Marshall Islands, the Delap School students do have IEP’s when needed, and they employ two full time special education teachers to help implement the strategies listed. Classrooms do share students based on student level and ability. We did not notice any computer labs at the public school and were told the public schools did not have computer labs for students because it was not in the budget to purchase and maintain them. Each class has around 30 kids, which the principal told us was normal. We were told by a teacher who taught in a public school in a more rural part of Majuro that she had as many as 60 students in one of her classes because she taught multiple grades at the same time. There was one school bus purchased by a grant through the Japanese government. |
Private Primary School
The COOP school is a private K-12 institution located on one of the few side streets in Majuro. It is widely considered one of the best in all of the Marshall Islands. Its teachers are all required to have a college diploma, it has a large library (respectively), it only has 25 kids per class, and it has around 20 computers in their computer lab. According to the school handbook, it costs $220.00 a month to attend with a 40% discount for the fourth child from your family (the minimum wage is $2 per hour in the Marshall Islands with the average salary just below $6,500 a year).
According to the staff, every class has a paraprofessional to help with learning and they have special education staff to help with student disabilities and/or problems. We did not hear of any behavior disability students in any of the schools we visited; either they did not want to admit there were behavior problems or there just weren't any. After walking around and seeing how nice and courteous the kids were we have to believe there were very few behavior disability kids. Students at the COOP school were required to attend summer school if they were behind or scored low on semester tests. They could also be held back if scores did not improve. |
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Trade School
WAM is a trade school for high school age students who are struggling with traditional education or have already dropped out. This school offers a six month program dedicated to learning different tools, maintaining woodworking tools, designing projects and constructing wooden objects with precision and pride. During the first month of the program, students learn the different woodworking tools, both modern and native, and repeatedly take them apart only to put them back together. This repetition gives WAM’s students the lifelong skills needed to one day open their own woodworking studio or design their own tools. After this initial learning period students are taught how to use their tools to mold and shape native woods into their final projects. Each project builds on previous knowledge until the final assignment every student must work on together; creating a traditional Marshall Island outrigger canoe. When finished, this canoe will be sold to help fund future WAM classes. Beyond the money gained from selling student projects and outrigger canoes, WAM is entirely grant funded and relied on the generosity of others to keep its doors open. While only accepting 25 students per session it receives as many as 150 applications.
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College and University in the Marshall Islands
There are two higher education options in the Marshall Islands; The College of the Marshall Islands and The University of the South Pacific. The College of the Marshall Islands is, in our estimation, the more popular of the two. It is a community college offering a range of Associates of Arts degrees from associates in business to nursing to elementary education. Similar to community colleges in the U.S., the College of the Marshall Islands offers an affordable education. This is helpful for those going to school for the first time who are looking to get credits before moving onto a four year institution or coming back to school to further a current degree or interest. Students rage in age from traditional high school graduates to those getting their first degree later in their lives. The College of the Marshall Islands offers the flexibility to dabble in multiple degrees while still keeping with the rigors of a college education. We sat in on a couple of the classes and enjoyed the enthusiasm of the students. They are willing to go outside of their comfort zones and push themselves to earn their grades. In one particular class, students were asked to give presentations about cultures and traditions of their family/island. This was thanks to the professor, Anne Bennett, who was our tour guide for the time we were on island. Anne embodied the Iokwe spirit and always tried to educate us about the Marshall Islands. She let us explore and have self-discovery, but she also asked her students to give these presentations as part of their summer school class. She was AWESOME! The students all gave presentations on a range of topics including; How to welcome strangers, lifestyle of their island, how to share food and personal family traditions. Many of the students brought handmade objects to give to us as a way to welcome us to the class and Marshall Islands. It is not customary to stand out in a crowd and speak in front of a class; there is a saying that goes “the tall tree gets the wind,” and it means "don’t make a spectacle of yourself and get yourself noticed!" Despite this, the students did a very good job in conveying their various topics as well as making us feel welcome in a foreign land.
The second option for higher education is the University of the South Pacific which is a true four year higher learning institution. We did not have as much contact with educators or students from this institution because of scheduling conflicts. We hoped twelve days on Majuro would have been enough time to meet up with someone from the University of the South Pacific. But when we were free and stopped by, the school was either closed or there were classes in session. In between classes the students at CMI would be outside talking, singing or hanging out, but the students at USP did not so we weren't able to talk to them. We could tell that CMI enjoyed a larger campus than USP, but USP, which has campuses all over the south pacific, had just purchased a large building and land to build a new campus on Majuro. |