1 Sep 2009

Lower retirement age shunts Fiji teacher trainees into classrooms

2:54 pm on 1 September 2009

Fiji's Council of Social Services says the lowered retirement age for civil servants is compromising the standard of education in the country.

The comment follows the Public Service Commission's announcement that more than two thousand, 2-hundred people have left the public sector since the retirement age was lowered from 60 to 55 in April.

The council's executive director, Hasan Khan, says one of the outcomes of the reform is that the forced exit of many highly skilled, experienced teachers has resulted in their replacement by third year trainees.

"At the moment there are some very young principals coming out at school so school management committees are fairly concerned about the future of the children. It would have been better to get retirees at half their salary and continue with them for at least one or two years and then get the teachers who are out of the training colleges to gain some mentoring from these people and then move on eh"

Hasan Khan of Fiji's Council of Social Services.