Ecole Maternelle Sacre-Couer Annex Anambrou in Port Vila and Pikinini Playtime will work together to provide better education opportunities for children with special needs.
The two institutions have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for this partnership.
The Principal of Pikinini Playtime, Port Vila, Carol Batten is excited to work with the school.
“We know that in Vanuatu many children with disabilities still cannot attend school and those who do enroll often have very limited opportunities to learn because teachers just don’t have the skills and abilities to meet their needs,” she said.
“We now have more than sixty students with special needs attending our schools but there is much more that can be done. We believe that by working together with schools like Maternelle Sacre-Couer we can continue to develop the skills of our staff while assisting other schools and teachers to overcome the challenges that they face working with these children.”
The agreement covers joint training sessions and workshops, awareness programmes for parents and the community.
There will also be opportunities for staff exchanges between the schools for teachers and special needs support staff and focused programs to assist students with specific needs such as autism, dyslexia or hearing impairments.
“Working with these children who need a little extra assistance is often a challenge but it also has its own rewards,” Batten added.
“Helping a child, who is unable to hear and speak, to learn to communicate with parents and friends, seeing the delight on their faces as they learn to read, watching as their personality starts to blossom while they learn to inquire and explore the world of knowledge in books, seeing the tears in the eyes of their parents, these are simply wonderful moments. In Vanuatu, we have a real lack of expertise in these areas but by assisting each other we believe we can improve the educational outcomes for many more children who need our help.”
Donald A. Pelam, School Council Chairman for the Anambrou Annexe of Ecole Maternelle Sacre-Couer said, “We believe this is an opportunity to extend the quality education that we provide to even more children in our area. Children with special needs provide us with a challenge but it is a challenge that we are ready to face and we believe that by partnering with Pikinini Playtime we will be able to achieve much more than we could by working alone.”
The first engagement between the schools will be support for each other’s Music Nights with Pikinini Playtime contributing to Ecole Maternelle Sacre-Couer’s Music Night in October.
The schools acknowledged Angelinah Eldads Vira of the Curriculum Development Unit for bringing them together and proposing the initiative.
They hope that this will be an example to encourage other schools to share their skills and knowledge to further improve education.
Photo supplied Caption: Donald Pelam, School Council Chairman for the Anambrou Annexe of Ecole Maternelle Sacre-Couer and Tony from Pikinini Playtime with the signed MOU