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Marion Sanders has been to Tonga so many times in the past three years that she regards it as her second home. She also says the purpose of her visits has offered her some of the biggest challenges of her lecturing career.

Marion, a lecturer at Bethlehem Tertiary Institute, is also its director of offshore teaching programmes - a role that has seen her visit Tonga seven times in three years. There, she has been helping to teach the country's teachers, many of whom are untrained, adapting the Bethlehem Institute's programmes to the Tongan way of life. She has just returned from her latest trip.

“The majority of children in Tonga are educated in the mission schools originally set up by various churches,'' she explains. For many years they were the only schools offering education. Now, however, the standards in those schools have fallen behind the government-run schools. “Many of the teachers in the mission schools have never been trained to teach. As long as they finished secondary school they were deemed to be suitable to teach,'' says Marion.

After attempts to improve the quality of education through a new curriculum and reorganising schools failed, efforts turned to improving the teaching. “They came to the conclusion that the only way to improve the quality of education is to work with the teachers - and we believe the same thing - you need to work with the teachers.''

The programme that has been developed differs from that on offer in Tonga, and also recognises that the students are already teaching. “They don't do a practicum and there is a Christian foundation to the programme,'' says Marion. “The reason is that, at the institute, we're not just interested in skills and knowledge we're also interested in ethical behaviour and character.''

Marion also sees it as mission work “because in Tonga I'm relating to people who have very little. Most of the teachers, if the programme was not offered, have no access to higher education. For me it's mission work - it's genuinely making a difference, not only in the teachers' own classrooms, but also in the teachers' schools and the teachers' communities.''

But it is not a case of imposing a New Zealand developed programme on the teachers. “They want to be good teachers. We're trying to do that but still hold on to the things they value in their education system. We're not going in and saying `our system is the best system' we're saying `this is what we can offer you that complements the things you value'.''

The programme has been operating in Tonga for three years and has the backing of the Tongan government. There are 16 students on the programme in Tonga who have been selected by the Free Wesleyan Church. Each semester there is an intensive two-week course after which study material is left. The students then meet weekly as a study group under the watchful eye of a senior teacher. “It's very well planned and the resources are all provided.''

There have been requests from other countries - Solomon Islands, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Malaysia and Indonesia as well as Uzbekistan and Nigeria - for the programme to be expanded, but at the moment, the focus is on achieving NZQA approval. “Then we'll begin looking at the requests we've had,'' says Marion.

Article written by Stuart Whitaker, Reporter, Bay News, Tauranga