Fiji Television Limited has defended it's Spell Well Competition stating that the program is educational and it aspires to build vocabulary skills and develop word association.

Minister for Education Filipe Bole earlier raised concerns about the objectives of the Spellwell Competition sponsored by FMF Chow, stating that some of the words used are difficult for children to spell.

Bole said the words are low frequency words we hardly use in our writing and certainly not in conversations and for the quiz master to expect class six students to understand them is murderous.

However in a statement Fiji TV Head of Corporate Affairs Tanya Waqanika said while they welcome constructive criticism raised by the Minister, they have not received any official complaint from any participating school that the words that they were tested on were hard.

Waqanika said they have received positive comments from students and teachers, adding it will not be a competition if they tested words that the children are familiar with.

The Spell Well program has seen 48 primary schools appearing for the preliminaries for Season 2.


Story by: Ana Naisoro