Today’s Solomon Girl Facilitates Girls Education and Empower Rural Schools To Read

Report from our partner organization, Today’s Solomon Girl (TSG). TSG is an indigenous organization based in the Solomon Islands that focuses on serving girls, particularly in education. Read their report below

“The main issue preventing girls in rural Solomon Islands from completing their high school education is the high cost of school fees. Many families in these rural communities struggle with the financial burden, which significantly impacts the ability of girls to attend and complete their education.”

The Today’s Solomon Girl is a small Civil Society Organisation founded with a mission to serve the Girls in this country especially in the area of Education. We are so glad to share some news about what we are doing and what we have been contributing to in terms of local, national and global development initiatives. 

In July 2024, the small girls committee invited Dr Debra McDougall from the University of Melbourne to speak to the girls’ leaders about the challenges of school fees in Solomon Islands rural communities, Dr McDougall inspired the group of young women about the issue of high school fees in rural Solomon Islands village. In the rural areas the issue of unschooled children is very high and pressing for many communities. She was sharing about the Kulu language schools inspired and founded by Dr Alpheus Zobule of Ranogga, Western Province. Dr Zobule started the language schools in the hope that young children can learn their own kulu language before learning English. This has been a groundbreaking work in Solomon Islands education system.

In line with Dr Debra’s talk, we also receive statistics on school fees from the study mentioned above. 

Table 1: Statistics on household level spending in two community study in 2023-2024 show that school fees 

Among the top five average spending at household level, school fees are the highest spending per annum. The table above reports that the average school fee per family is Solomon Islands $1,562. What we learned from this study was the pressure school fees put on families, women headed households and the community to generate income to meet school fees. 

As you can see school fees spending at the household level of 84 households is still the highest expense for rural families. 

“Education” was the top response to questions about what would allow them to live better in future, followed by subsistence gardening. For families not receiving large remittances, or help from MP, paying school fees was difficult or not possible. 

Women do various activities for income generation so pressure on women to contribute to household incomes is very high. Yet income generation in the villages is labor intensive and markets are very far from the village. 

The session with Dr McDougall from Melbourne University, Australia, was really fruitful and the young ladies in attendance were: Cony Bird (Education Ambassador to MWT) Mary Teasanau (Women in Sports), Loate Filoa (Grants’ Coordinator and Girls focal point) Glorinda Madi (Kulu Language Institute), Ruth Maetala (Founding President). Picture by Kinilofea Maetala (UT Photography Major Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand). Absent Janice Ashwin (Foreign Relations Officer). 

We acknowledge Dignity Pasifik (local research firm based in Solomon Islands) for supporting the breakfast meeting at the Coral Seas Haddon Restaurant. Dignity Pasifik contributes in small ways to support the work of TSG in its social responsibility commitments for the 22023-2024 calendar. 

In other news, TSG is proud to report that we have collected 1,000 books to ship to Laulana School in Langanga Lagoon. Laulana school built its library last year and is looking forward to the school books. Speaking to Principal Lilian Ete, she is very excited that the books are on their way. She said that the school board was very excited to receive help from a local organisation. 

Reading books will help rural children access quality education (SDG  4 Access to Quality Education). A recent national report stated that, Efforts to improve the quality of education through curriculum development, teacher training, and infrastructure improvements have contributed to steady progress in SDG 4. The Ministry of Education and Human Resources Department: National Development Strategy 2016-2035, National Education Action Plan 2022-2026, Education Strategic Framework 2016-2030, Leaders and Education Authorities Program and Senior Secondary Education2022-2026, Education Strategic Framework 2016-2030, Leaders and Education Authorities Program and Senior Secondary Education Improvement Project are some of the reforms that government has progressed in since 2020-2023. It is important to note that there was a lack of data to comprehensively inform the UN dashboard trend for the Solomon Islands' progress on the majority of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2023. This data gap has limited our ability to provide a complete and accurate assessment of our progress and challenges in these areas. Hence, there has been a misrepresentation of the Solomon Islands to the United Nation and the world in 2023.

One way the government seeks to encourage reading in schools is the commitment to build libraries across the nation to encourage reading. Sourcing reading books is the challenge for most schools, particularly rural schools. 

Picture: Ruth help with packing books during school holidays in July 2024

Also, in July, TSG was represented by Ruth Maetala in the International Social Science Conference of Natural Resources Management where she was able to present on gendered perceptions of climate change on natural resources and governance in Cairns Australia. It was wonderful to meet with postgraduate students who attended from Taiwan and past partners with Solomon Islands in education. The conference was fruitful and inspired some of the efforts of TSG in the last quarter of this year. 

Picture: Ruth with Taiwan Postgraduate students from the National Taiwan University who are studying agriculture and food security.

Exchange learning in forums like this has been helpful to see different career pathways young women of Solomon Islands can pursue.

By: Ruth Maetala & the Today’s Solomon Girl (Report)