Education
Education in Tuvalu is free and compulsory between the ages of 6 and 15 years. Each island has a primary school. Motufoua Secondary School is located on Vaitupu. Students board at the school during the school term, returning to their home islands each school vacation. Fetuvalu High School, a day school operated by the Church of Tuvalu, is located on Funafuti.
The pupil-teacher ratio for primary is 25:1 and for secondary 25:1 (2001/02). Fetuvalu offers the Cambridge syllabus. Motufoua offers the Fiji Junior Certificate (FJC) at year 10, Tuvaluan Certificate at Year 11 and the Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate (PSSC) at Year 12, set by the Fiji-based exam board SPBEA. Sixth form students who pass their PSSC go on to the Augmented Foundation Programme, funded by the government of Tuvalu. This program is required for tertiary education programmes outside of Tuvalu and is available at the University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre in Funafuti.
Required attendance at school is 10 years for males and 11 years for females (2001). The adult literacy rate is 99.0% (2002).
The Tuvaluan Employment Ordinance (1966) sets the minimum age for paid employment at 14 years and prohibits children under the age of 15 from performing hazardous work.
Read more about this topic: Tuvalu
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