Language-in-education policies are developed and implemented within contexts of great complexity. Where policies appear less than perfect on paper, this presents a valuable opportunity to examine the contextual factors that have led to their development, helping policymakers to understand the conditions under which policy change must take place. This paper considers an early-exit transitional model of multilingual education that has recently been endorsed in Vanuatu. While the academic literature would conclude that this model is far from ideal, this paper suggests that the time is right for the type of change that is being implemented in this context. It examines the historico-political factors that have left this problematic policy as the best chance of change, and identifies ways in which it could be modified within a plurilingual approach across the whole curriculum.