Fiji's interim Education Minister, Filipe Bole, has announced that country has achieved universal primary education.
In an Information Ministry release it says figures for 2008 show primary enrolment has increased to 96 percent while secondary school enrolment has increased to 79 percent.
It says that means Fiji has met its Millennium Development Goal target well before the expected date of 2015.
But the General Secretary of the Fiji Teachers Union, Agni Deo Singh, believes that straight enrolment figures are not the best way to assess access to education:
"I would understand that completion of primary school, at least eight years of primary school, would to some extent come closer, but preferably twelve years of education is what is needed so that we have some marked achievement."
Both Mr Singh and the interim regime say that dropout rates are still a problem
