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Gap in skills training for Pacific youth

Collaboration between Pacific Island governments and non-governmental organisations is being suggested as one of the ways to help young people find employment.

A global report from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation on youth skills highlights the importance of second chance programmes for students who drop out of school.

The officer in charge at the UNESCO Pacific office says there are too few secondary school places for the number of Pacific students finishing primary school, something she attributes in part to a lack of government funding.

Susan Vize says by students in rural areas particularly need more opportunities for training, something governments struggle to afford.

“Like you have to provide for the teacher’s salary and the transport and where’s the teacher going to live and all of these sorts of things and that’s quite difficult to maintain in a tight budgetary situation. But also I think NGOs are often better at working at that community level, small-scale etc than government is.”

UNESCO’s Susan Vize.