150th anniversary: Fiji’s technical institute

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Students working on a project at Derrick Technical Institute. Picture: SUPPLIED/FNU

The Fiji National University has come a long way.

From six different higher education institutions, it is now Fiji’s only and first university.

One of its colleges made its humble beginnings in 1959, when government announced it had finalised plans to build a technical institute on a block of land in Suva located at the junction of Princes and King’s roads.

The space was formerly the site of Suva’s Public Works Department Depot, whose relocation cost Fiji over 22,000 pounds.

Later called the Derrick Institute, the technical education institution had three main aims, though it fulfilled many subsidiary functions as well.

It was set up as a secondary technical school for 150 boys who did a four-year course.

It was also a commercial school for 20-25 girls on a one-year course and an extension class institute for day and evening classes.

The secondary technical school ran two full-time courses, each lasting two years.

To enter the junior course boys were supposed to have good pass in the secondary schools entrance, now called the Fiji Eighth Year Examination.

They were also expected to have had some experience in “workshop subjects”.

“While attending the junior course, boys received full secondary education in which the emphasis was science, mathematics and practical kills of technical drawing and workshop practice,” an article in The Fiji Times of June 20, 1959 noted.

In their final year (second) boys were given the opportunity to concentrate either on “building or engineering” subjects and sit for the Fiji Junior Certificate Examination which, if they passed, would qualify them for the senior course.

Boys who did not qualify for the senior course were encouraged to seek employment and continued their studies as part time students.

Those who successfully finished the senior course qualified to sit for the School Certificate Examination, which is equivalent to form five.

The first buildings were a wing that contained laboratories, a library, a commercial and drafting room, visual aids room and a workshop wing that had hand and machine woodworking and metalworking shops, an electrical installation shop, a motor repair shop and a sheet metalworking space.

The institute’s central block featured administrative offices, a staff room, a café, building trade workshop and toilet facilities.

A hostel for 60 boys were later planned together with other buildings, to meet the needs of the institute.

The first part of the project was estimated at around 163,000 pounds. Plans to establish the Derrick Institute dates back as far as 1953 when it was first suggested by Dr F.S.Harlow, the adviser on technical education to the Secretary of State for the Colonies.

The Derrick Institute, named after Ronald Albert Derrick, later became the Fiji Institute of Technology, which today is part of the Fiji National University, an amalgamation of six of Fiji’s tertiary education colleges.

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