Minister for Education visits International School Seychelles |09 September 2022

• ‘Time to share, learn and adopt’

The Minister for Education, Dr Justin Valentin, and a team from his ministry yesterday visited the International School Seychelles (ISS).

Since his appointment as minister, this was his first visit to this private school located at Mont Fleuri.

This visit falls under the programme set by the minister to visit all the schools in Seychelles – be it private or state schools.

“I also received some invitations from the school which I could not honour. Then the school made a special request to the president and in fact today, the president asked me to visit the school and hear what it wanted to push forward. This visit also links private schools to public schools.”

Whenever the minister visits a school, the first thing he observes is the missing gap. “What is it that we can share, adopt and learn from the schools? For me, it is looking at possibilities for development. I cannot say that I will borrow all the ideas from the school but at least by having the principal secretaries and the directors general around, they will see what we have in the schools, what are the gaps and how we can establish connections.”

The first impression shared by the minister was: “I have seen some areas of collaboration already and I have seen very simple elements that I can share with teachers to implement in schools. For example – sitting areas, several small areas for their meals and a socialising area mainly for secondary schools. Another thing I have seen are lockers or hanging hooks where students can hang their bags so that there are more space inside the classroom”

The major thing the minister saw and will try his best to implement in public schools is interactive books that can be installed on the teacher’s laptop and have the lessons projected. This according to him will reduce the load of the teachers by 40%.

The principal of the school, Elodie Vallantine, thanked the minister and his team for his visit and shared that as a private school they are very keen to work with the Ministry of Education.

“It is all about sharing and helping each other to improve our system and procedures so that it can benefit all the learners. It is very important for us to help our students but we can also help students from the community at large.”

Ms Vallantine said during the course of this visit, the guests and the ISS school team had the opportunity to share methods and inclusion of all students.

ISS just started a new school year on Monday and has 1069 students out of which 75% are Seychellois and they are thinking of expanding. There are 136 employees and 75% are Seychellois.

As a former maths teacher, Minister Valentin visited a Year 6 class where the students were fully focused on their maths lesson and they have invited the minister to come and teach them for one class which he said he will make time for.

As a token, the minister shared the name and password for the school to have access to the Britannica digital learning for all the students.

The visit ended with a sit down with the ISS board of governors.

Minister Valentin noted that he has been having several meetings with the private schools in Seychelles and last year in December he had a meeting with 11 representatives from the private schools.

The delegation from the MoE comprised PS Merna Eulentin, PS John Lesperance, director of Education for Strategic Priorities Alex Souffe and DG for Networking and Engagement Jutta Alexis.

The team from ISS was composed of the chair of the board of directors Priscilla Chetty, Preethi Nair, student Aden Grandcourt and Janet Figaro.

The accompanying photos show some highlights of Minister Valentin’s visit to the ISS yesterday.

Vidya Gappy