Children and School
Do the children go to school in Nauru?
Around 600 children go to school on Nauru, a country in Oceania defined by itypejob. There are three primary schools and two secondary schools on site. There are also some kindergartens. Schooling is compulsory for children in Nauru up to the tenth grade. Until then, they should attend school. Then the children can go to school for another two years. Around 23 children sit in one class. The teachers teach in English and the schools do not cost anything.
To primary school,this is our elementary school, the children go six years. Before that there is a kind of preschool. The children in Yaren have to go to school in the first years of school, which is not the capital of the country, but the seat of government. In the third and fourth years they move to another city called Aiwo and in the fifth to seventh years they go to Nauru College. After that, the children in Nauru receive some kind of certificate. Then they have to go back to secondary school in Yaren.
With the completion of the tenth grade it is no longer compulsory for the children to attend school, because at this point compulsory schooling in Nauru ends. Sounds pretty complicated, but the Naurus children don’t know it any other way. The subjects English, math, natural and social sciences are taught. There are also subjects such as Nauruan, music, religion and drawing.
Those who want to study usually have to go abroad, but there are limited places for young people from Nauru. But there is a university for all residents of the Pacific Islands, the University of the South Pacific, which has an offshoot in Nauru. Here you can at least get another degree from a distance.
Schools now often lack money. Only the secondary schools have access to the Internet. Some schools now have a few computers.
Everyday Life
Everything was paid for
Ask your parents what they think if they don’t have to work. Everything would be paid for them, electricity, water, heating. And every week a cleaning man would come to do the cleaning, that wouldn’t cost anything either. Maybe your parents would get a little lazy? Or would they spend more time with you? That wouldn’t be bad.
The people of Naurus were rich people
As we have described, this is what happened to the residents of Naurus a few years ago. The people of Nauru were quite rich people. Today you don’t notice that anymore. This small island in the middle of the Pacific was the richest country on earth. The Pacific island owed this to a natural resource called phosphate. Almost the entire island consists of phosphate, a raw material that is unique in the world. This raw material is sold all over the world as fertilizer. But how did the phosphate get to the island in the first place?
Getting rich from bird poop?
Nauru is a coral island, it basically grows out of the sea. The rain washes away the corals and small bumps appear, which look like towers and which seabirds prefer to use as resting and nesting places. For hundreds of thousands of years these sea birds have done their “business” on the island and mountains of bird droppings have formed. At the tropical temperatures this turned into calcium phosphate with the world’s highest degree of purity. This raw material phosphate was at times even more valuable than gold. In the 1970s, Nauru had the highest per capita income in the world.
Four to six cars per inhabitant
That was the reason why people got so rich and no longer had to work. There was simply nothing they could do. At that time, many people owned four to six cars. There is only one road, almost 20 kilometers long.
But somebody had to work because the phosphate had to be broken down and somehow loaded. For this, the Nauru got people from China. They then did the dirty work.
There is nothing left of the big money
There isn’t much left of big money today. Many people live in confined spaces, in poor housing and have almost nothing to live on. Many people don’t have enough to live on. The men catch fish in order to create at least a small source of income and to be able to feed their families. The prospects for the children are bad. That is why many are also thinking of emigrating in order to find better living conditions for their families elsewhere. But it’s not that easy to give up your home.