The Department of Education recently hosted Dr. Michael Bezzina of the Australian Catholic University. Dr. Bezzina is the Head of the School of Educational Leadership and Director of the Centre for Creative and Authentic Leadership at ACU. He is also our Adjunct Professor of Educational Leadership. During his visit, he met with staff, spent some time visiting schools and presented workshops and seminars to UniFiji Master of Teaching and Educational Leadership students, academic staff and the broader educational community. On Saturday 10th July, Dr. Michael Bezzina held a workshop on ‘Learn the Leading … Lead the Learning. Some ideas about Authentic Leadership.’ It was attended by school principals, teachers, education officers, staff of UniFiji and FNU and more than 120 of our postgraduate students doing Educational Leadership and Master of Teaching.

Dr. Michael Bezzina put forward the five big questions in Education:

- What do we stand for?

- What do we want to achieve?

- What does good learning look like?

- How do we lead in schools?

- How does this all come together?

This generated a good discussion. The feedback from participants was that the seminar was excellent and timely. The Department of Education intends to hold at least three of these ‘hot topic’ seminars per year.