Do you live to learn or learn to live? Or, as the title of this series suggests, one lives and learns concurrently.

But learn what? This has been for 5,000 years a fundamental question for parents - what skills and kwowledge to give their children in order that they might, in the first place, survive. Later came all the niceties associated with civilisation and the pursuit of a life of quality and happiness.

In modern Mauritius, our children go through 15 years of non-stop schooling, from age three to 18, learning what the various teachers decided to teach and gradually shifting, as he/she approached SC and HSC, to mastering what the University of Cambridge Examinations Syndicate prescribes in the official syllabus (to be fair, in recent years, the MES has had an increasing role, on behalf of the Mauritian child , to modulate what Cambridge included in its syllabus). Decision-makers, indeed most parents/pupils/pedagogues are not having much say regarding what our children learn at school. To say the least, this is a very unsatisfactory situation!

The answer is for us to develop our own national curriculum(NC), the basics of which have already been worked out.“The School curriculum comprises all learning and other experiences that the school plans for its pupils.” (England, 1999). It is supported by peer interaction and other informal living experiences that occur in school-life as well as out-of-school. A good curriculum enables and takes into account such experiences.

Foremost here is the development of good learning habits that will serve the learner through life.

The National curriculum can be formally and legally adopted (as a new“NC Act”) becoming the major political tool of educational reform. All schools are then mandated to follow its broad, agreed contents adapted and delivered in a way, which may differ from school to school, thereby preserving the social, local, religious or philosophical character of the school as well as its geographical and environmental realities.

As a NC provides for a “minimum common learning”, which all schools must offer, it naturally includes guidelines for going beyond or way beyond that minimum core.

An alternative exists between (a) a detailed and prescriptive National curriculum (“cursus scolaire obligatoire et détaillé jour après jour”); and (b) a framework national curriculum, a flexible set of guidelines, which can be adapted to appropriate alternative pathways of learning (academic, vocational, technical) from a given age.

Under alternative (a) - the old French model - in all schools at a given time at a given level, under a given pathway (filière), all classrooms “hum to the same tune”. This alternative ensures uniformity as well as good compliance/control.

Under alternative (b) - the recent English and Indian models – the trained and experienced Head of school (in close consultation with governors, teachers and parents) has the academic freedom to implement the NC as he/she and his/her team choose.

This alternative respects diversity in school profiles, leaves room for innovation and provides for the continued existence of different “projets éducatifs”.

By its “liberal”, open-ended nature, a framework curriculum is more difficult to monitor. Ensuring compliance is also more difficult. The appropriate training of Heads of schools (both in educational administration and leadership) as well as parental education are vital elements for the successful implementation of a NC.

Since the NC sets out the full and statutory “entitlement to learning” for all, it lies at the heart of government policy to provide quality education for all.

<B>Dr. Michael ATCHIA</B>