Ramgoolam claimed that he had listened to the people and shelved the reform proposed by his Education minister. I think he did the right thing by asking for a time-out. No doubt, he will come back with a better proposal to improve education in Mauritius, and no doubt as well, he will now listen carefully to educators and pedagogues about the type of education system we need to adopt.

During this time-out, Ramgoolam perhaps could devote some time to the other pressing issue, inherently tied to education in this country. It is the perennial problem of private tuition, whose extent is widening by the day. There are two main reasons why lawmakers should criminalize private tuition. One, it favours one segment of the population only, the rich. Two, it is a gross social injustice that teachers are allowed to work after school hours and evade paying taxes with impunity on their rather fat earnings.

Teachers are civil servants, they are paid by the public to perform a job in a classroom, that of giving our children academic training. It is generally believed that teachers do very little in school. Some even come out loud to say they do not complete the curriculum and, therefore, their services must be hired for extra lessons. Parents are torn; they either pay up and give their sons and daughters whatever is needed to succeed, or stick to their principles ? many parents do not agree with the private tuition business ? and see their offspring fall through the cracks. Which one will it be? No need to answer.

<B>Unaffordable</B>

But not everybody can afford tuition. It is not cheap. A quick informal survey I conducted revealed that, on average, parents pay up to Rs 2,500 a month per child about to sit for HSC. That does not include other related costs, such as transport. Just imagine the financial pressure on parents with two children in high school earning a salary of ? let?s be generous ? Rs 20,000 a month. Many parents don?t even come close to that figure. This extra financial burden is mainly negative for the poor and downtrodden. Compare their plight with rich parents who send their children to private schools; they are allowed a tax deduction for school tuition fees.

Wealthy parents can afford private lessons, often from the best teachers. Poor parents cannot. But there is more. The former also possess the logistics to drop off and pick up their children from the teacher?s place of residence; the latter, already burdened by having to pay for private tuition, do not have the means to make the lives of their children less stressful. It is reasonable to argue that life becomes much easier for our children when they are driven to and from their teacher?s garage-cum-classroom. Everything is available for rich elitist kids to succeed.

There is nothing we can do with respect to children being born in well-off families. On the contrary, we can and should do something to eliminate the social injustice of a civil society that gives an edge to children of the wealthy over children of the poor in the form of paid extra lessons from the best teachers. This is socially unjust, unacceptable and hardly democratic, the playing field is not level; rich kids will always do better in school than their poorer compatriots because the entire state apparatus is stacked in their favour.

An often-heard argument is that teachers are not paid well enough and as a result they must resort to extra work to supplement their income. Fair enough, a grievance is a grievance, legitimate or not, however there is no law, and certainly no shackles around their ankles that would prevent them from looking around for another better-paid job. Otherwise, please pay taxes on your earnings like we all do, that is until Ramgoolam musters the courage to ban private lessons altogether.

Teachers lie on their income tax returns by not declaring their income from paid tuition. Yet, they are so-called role models, their students look up to them for guidance; they are called upon to show good moral values to those they are educating, parents use them as a standard bearer to raise their children. Can they look at those youngsters and say: ? You should not lie?? May be they can. After all, are they not driven by greed to pack a garage with forty or so students, often without even knowing their names, save for the time at the end of the month when they call them out to collect their fees?

Income Tax officials should start taking notice of this blatant tax evasion. By signing their tax form as a declaration of the truth, there ought to be enough ground for prosecution and tax collection on past dues. And please don?t play the no-evidence card. Ask them how they manage to build mansions on a teacher?s salary, ask them why there is a queue of uniformed school kids out on the street waiting for the earlier batch to leave, I?d say bring them to accountability.

<B>Necessary evil</B>

The government is party to this practice, turning a blind eye, believing that it is a ?necessary evil?. Yet, a general medical practitioner, a civil servant just like a teacher, is not allowed to work privately. Is it all right for a teacher to work for the public system and privately, while a medical practitioner isn?t? Where is the logic in this practice; more importantly, where is the fairness behind this decision? If Ramgoolam is bent on bringing more democracy to our lives, then he should start by eliminating all types of injustices.

In the end, as long as tuition remains legal, our education system will not change. There will be no incentive at all to improve public education, good results obtained by good students will fool the authorities into believing that all is well with our education. We will continue to glorify our few top students, whose success came from help received outside of the public system, ignoring the many who failed because they didn?t get enough help from within the public system. Outlawing paid private lessons must be a central part of any education reform.

In conclusion, private tuition, a slightly different form of private schooling, betrays the spirit of free public education that was made available so poor children can have access to an education. The basic tenet of free education to all rests on the principle that everybody should get an equal chance to flourish intellectually. That principle, though it never fully lived up to its expectations, is now even further away from fruition, with paid tutoring affordability the decider in this competitive game of who succeeds academically and moves on to bigger and better things in life, and who fails and gets left behind. Left to watch with envy their counterparts who were dealt a pair of good hands, privileged by birth and by the government.

<B>Dr. Saoud Baccus

[email protected]</B>