Competition for entrance into the Secondary schools has always been one of the features of our system of education. This is not surprising in a society that places a high premium on academic success but is unable to allocate enough resources to education to meet the demands. Until recently, the number of what parents consider to be good Secondary schools has been rather limited and hence the competition for admission into these has always been quite fierce. During the past two decades this competition has become more intense, harsh and inhuman. This must be one of the undesirable, but not unexpected, consequences of our relative economic success that has given Mauritians a taste of the ?good life? and fuelled the drive for material success. As academic achievement is seen as the gateway to success in life, parents, pupils and teachers are all caught up in the rat race for fame, success and material wealth and a silent entente has evolved between these three parties to help each achieve its desired goals. Those parents and pupils who are unable or unwilling to enter into the rat race for one reason or another are pitilessly left behind. The result is the 40 % failure rate at the Certificate of Primary Education (CPE) examinations.

The proposal to create nine national colleges to which the 1260 pupils having scored the highest marks at the CPE Examinations will be admitted is bound to exacerbate the competition. Not surprisingly, reactions to this proposal have been strong, at times, violent both for and against. Those parents who feel that their children will be able to thrive in this environment of increased competition are for the proposal as are those teachers who feel that their private tuition business will flourish. The parents whose children will be left behind ? the vast majority ? are hardly able to understand the situation and mostly remain silent. Educators and those who feel that such harsh competition at such a young age is destructive have voiced their opposition.

?Since parents see the Star schools as gateways to success the solution is not to further narrow the bottleneck, but to provide alternative gateways. We can do that by regionalizing the post- HSC State scholarships.?

At the moment there is trench warfare between the two sides and since no one wants to compromise we seem far away from a national consensus, which, on a matter such as this, affecting as it does all Mauritians, even those not yet born, would have been a good thing in the national interest. As so often happens in our beloved country, the debate has taken a communal turn so that we now have a politico-communal problem with the educational issues being relegated to the back seat although recently there have been attempts to refocus on real issues. I do not wish to join in the conflict, but I want to try to go round it or rather beyond it and invite others to do the same.

To find the solution to the problem we have to find the cause/s of the problem. We have to look at the fundamentals. What is the lure of the Star schools? Is it just the glamour that being a pupil of the Royal College or the Queen Elizabeth College (QEC) seems to confer on both pupil and parents? The answer, of course, is that the parents are not just looking for glamour but for the academic achievement that will enable their child (a) to carry out university studies, become a professional and thus ensure success in life, at least material success, and (b), may be, win one of the scholarships offered by the friendly countries and thus resolve the problem of the financing of the studies, or even (c) become a laureate and solve all the problems and achieve fame as well and finally, failing all that, (d) secure a seat at the University of Mauritius (UoM), which is financially equivalent to winning a scholarship. A look at the annual list of laureates and those coming just after will convince any parent that the Star colleges are the gateway to the fulfillment of that ambition. So the poor parents have no choice; even as the child is born they have only one thought in mind; if it?s a boy: Royal College, if it?s a girl: QEC! Who can blame them? They want the best for their child.

So, it would seem that the answer to the problem is to create more Star schools. But that in itself will not reduce the competition because securing a place in a Star school is not the end but the means to an end, which is to be among the best. Unfortunately, even if there were more Star schools and assuming that we were able to give many more scholarships that will still not stop the race because parents will still feel that to be among the best the traditional Star schools are a passage obligé. So, how do we eliminate the race for the Star schools? One solution is to eliminate the Star schools, which is what the previous government did. But some people were not happy, so the present Government has reintroduced them and has even invented the Super Star schools! That will obviously make the rat race even madder. What is the way out?

Since parents see the Star schools as gateways to success the solution is not to further narrow the bottleneck, but to provide alternative gateways. We can do that by regionalizing the post-HSC State scholarships. We have regionalized admission to the secondary schools but we have done nothing to make it attractive to pupils and parents; the post HSC scholarships still go to the Star schools. By regionalizing scholarships we make it attractive for bright students to stay in their regions as they will face less competition there than at the national level and stand a good chance of achieving their objectives.

As bright students stay in their regions it will encourage the emergence of good schools, both primary and secondary, in the regions so that parents will not need to have recourse to all sorts of fraudulent practices to get their children admitted to high-performing primary schools outside their region in the hope that they will do well enough to secure admission in one of the Star schools. Parents will develop an interest in the schools in their region resulting in a true regionalization of education. To further develop the community interest in the schools and colleges they should be turned into centres of activity for the whole community for the practice of sports, physical culture, yoga, music, dance and drama, and other activities. Pupils whose parents are still at work can be kept gainfully occupied until their parents reach home. Remedial classes for needy students could also be held there. This will make of education what it should be: a community activity instead of what it is now, an individualistic and selfish undertaking.

The creation of regional State scholarships can be implemented without bringing any changes in the present set-up. It can even easily accommodate Minister Gokhool?s national colleges. Parents would now have a choice between seeking admission in the national colleges or in the regional colleges. In fact we might find more interest for the regional colleges than for the Traditional Star schools. The present State scholarships would then be divided into national State scholarships and Regional State scholarships. Numbers will have to be worked out to ensure fairness. I do not wish to go into such details in this article; various schemes are possible.

The regionalization of education will diminish the pressure on parents, pupils and teachers and reduce the competition but will not eliminate it as the number of State scholarships that Government can afford will still be limited as will be the number of seats at the UoM. So the next step to reduce the competition would be to provide financial assistance in the form of affordable loans to those students who have attained the required academic levels to pursue further studies but have not obtained a scholarship or secured a place at the UoM or who wish to study abroad. Such students loan schemes exist in many countries and are an essential element of their system of education. Government should take the lead in this and not leave it entirely to the private sector. Again I do not wish to go into the details but there are some interesting possibilities here also.

The regionalisation of State scholarships will have to be implemented in phases so as not to penalize those who have worked so hard to get into the Star schools. But it will have to be announced right now so that parents whose children will be taking the CPE examinations this year can decide between the national colleges and the regional colleges.

These two measures, the regionalisation of State scholarships and the setting up of students loan schemes, would render the CPE selection exercise more humane. Some people might regret the days when the QEC won 12 scholarships. That is good for the headlines but it is a very unhealthy state of affairs when two or three schools can get the lion share of the final rewards, leaving only the crumbs to the others. In a way it is the same situation as when my father and Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam sat for the English scholarship over eighty years ago; after all the effort that has been put into the democratization of education, not the least by Sir Seewoosagur himself, it is high time that we get rid of this vestige of our colonial past, that served us well at some point but that we have to overpass because the world has moved on. The past is useful as a store of knowledge and experience but we have to look to the future. If we cling to the past we are in danger of being irretrievably left behind.

The present proposal is not meant to save the existing system. There is no doubt in my mind that our system of education needs to be completely reviewed from the pre-primary to the tertiary level. But that cannot be done overnight; it needs careful thinking and even more careful action; above all, it needs national consensus, which is hardly possible in the present atmosphere of mistrust and antagonism. My proposal would remove much of the present stress on parents and children and, hopefully resolve the conflict between those for and against the national colleges and thus create a saner atmosphere for truly national discussions on education to take place.

Kumara VENKATASAWMY