When talking of strategies in education, one has to consider “a multiplicity of prongs approach” including (a) automatic promotion, (b) private tuition among others, as identified by ADEA (Association pour le developpement de l’éducation en Afrique), as being among the main causes of educational failure. However, it is quite surprising that not much is said on the ability of teachers to deliver the goods. Rather than pointing a finger at the practising teachers, it would be worthwhile considering the very nature of training that is offered to teachers.

The quality of training to teachers has to be constantly reviewed in the light of oncoming events. Although basically education may demand rather the same requirements from educators, the crust of it is nevertheless required to be constantly reviewed in the light of ever changing circumstances. There is no place for stagnation in educational requirements. If this is being accepted as the reality in the domain of education, the teaching profession is destined to be so resilient as to ever cater for “novelties in education”. In other words the teaching approach situation has got to be constantly updated in order to meet the growing demand in education. Without this new mentality of constant renewal, success in education is bound to backslide into drastic failure. The rate of success, whether in the primary or secondary sector, is doomed to gradual and inevitable dissatisfaction.

<B>The tentative first remedy</B>

The above picture, however hypothetical, does make sense. The first question that comes to mind is: how to go about improving? I should say that we require a constant renewal of basics in the education and training of teachers as well as in the content of the curriculum. One has to be extremely vigilant when catering for teachers’ requirements during the Teacher Training Strategy. The student teachers have got to be provided with new tools in educational practices. This has to be done, among other strategies, through requisite innovations in the content and approaches pertaining to the education of teachers. The innovations can take the form of initial updated forms of teacher education; the ongoing organisations to promote further education of teachers in order to provide them with a flood of novel approaches and new philosophy of education; the provision of the latest in education through the establishment of a proper and significant library for teachers to be in constant touch with the most recent in educational practices and curricula in other countries. Teachers and educators can thus constantly analyse our curriculum content in Mauritius in the light of curricula in other countries. I do not mean that we have to copy the practices in other countries. In fact it is never advisable to transplant the curricular content of one country to another. What is meant here is that knowledge of current practices in other countries can only enrich our knowledge and sharpen our own decisions about our country when it comes to curricular development.

In practice it is sometimes the temptation of reformers in education to carry on mostly with the same curricula with slight cosmetic changes.  Many do realise the real objectives of education. There is therefore a lot of cleaning up to be done. We want a gradual change for the better through (a) a revised look at teacher education (b) being realistic and innovative in curricula development.

It is so easy to maintain existing practices in education. This is because in fossilised minds, not taking the risk of change remains a safe haven to dwell in.

The children of the primary and even pre-primary schools are at risk. The 40% or so failures will always be maintained so long as the system does not cater for slow learners or children at risk. These are the two main factors resulting in ever growing failure. If the final bang i.e. the CPE examination is the yardstick for measuring the success or failure of pupils, well, let’s go by it. The rate of failures can never be remedied so long as we do not diagnose the real cause(s). Among the many reasons for failure, no one, or almost, has ever considered the need for early identification of children at risk as well as slow learners within the classes. Our present teaching approaches in the primary schools can be termed The Norm Reference Approach. In other words, very briefly, the system assumes that there is parity of ability in all classes, and that all children are to be taught at the same pace for the same amount of syllabus content. This approach is known as the Norm Reference Approach.

One has to realise that all children are not of the same ability in all subject studies. Each child has to be taught at a pace in accordance with his/her ability and capacity for assimilation. About the modalities for the system proposal, we can make specific proposals at a later stage. If the special approaches are acceptable and plausible, we can then ask whether qualified teachers are at all available who possess such special teaching abilities. The answer is nearly always not. This entails therefore, the need to provide teachers with the skills to cater for those in our regular system.

With the above suggestions, among the numerous we have in mind, we can tentatively try to reduce the rate of failure in the examinations held yearly for pupils at the end of their Certificate of Primary Education. To my thinking, rather than pointing finger at other multitudes of reasons for failure in education, it would be worthwhile first to consider the few factors enumerated above.

Andre WAN CHOW WAH</B> <I>Associate Professor</I>