Language-in-education policies are evolved and executed within contexts of great intricacy. Where policies seem less than perfect on paper, this proposes a valuable chance to explore the contextual factors that have led to their evolution, helping policymakers to grasp the conditions under which policy change must take place. This article examines an early-exit transitional model of multilingual education that has lately been supported in Vanuatu. While the academic literature would judge that this model is far from ideal, this article proposes that the time is right for the type of change that is being executed in this context. It explores the historico-political factors that have left this problematic policy as the best opportunity of change, and distinguishes ways in which it could be altered within a plurilingual approach across the whole curriculum.