By Staff Writer
Government may pay for teachers’ salaries in church and private schools with growing appeal to help out.
Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi told Parliament last week Government is looking carefully into it.
“We want to make sure the assistance will not suddenly stop,” he said during the Supplementary Budget debate.
Parliament heard of repeated appeals for help from the non-Government schools in their struggles to hold on to their teachers.
PM Tuilaepa said the main concern is to maintain the high standard of learning for children by the schools affording good teachers.
Salary increases for Government teachers have steadily drained away the teaching staff from non-Government schools in recent years that it is now a serious concern.
Government is already making annual contributions to outside schools and the PM believed it is helping to keep many of them running.
“The concern should be looked at seriously by the next Government because it will not benefit the future of the country and not just one party.
“But it needs to be studied carefully so that it won’t bankrupt the Government.”
Tuilaepa said it is important to look beyond at the longterm benefits for Samoa in the same way the National University of Samoa, NUS, was set up.
Member of the Council of Deputies, Le Mamea Ropati, was Minister of Education at the time when the NUS was established with a $5 budget.
“There was opposition at the time but the longterm vision was to set up the university as a higher learning institution for Samoa to fall back on.
“Whatever the troubles the University of the South Pacific is going through now, it is not a major worry for us with our own NUS in place.”
Tuilaepa also noted that the USP Alafua campus is now open to all study courses taught by the university instead of just agriculture it was intended for in the first place.
The PM recalled the first time Government decided to offer financial assistance to non-Government schools under the late Prime Minister Tofilau Eti Alesana.
“It was in 1983 when the Marist Brothers expressed disappointment at receiving virtually no assistance from Government yet the majority of the Members of Parliament were educated in Marist schools.”
Tuilaepa said that PM Tofilau agreed when assistance was suggested and the programme first started with $50,000 to schools.
“Now the assistance has grown into millions of tala ”
He extended the need for Government to look at other longterm investments with a vision for benefits to the country.
The proposed Vaiusu and Asau ports are examples he named that would offer job earnings through tourism and from having a base for the huge international fishing fleet.
