There was a time when some people thought that the elite was the fittest group to govern and to handle ?thinking work?. Democracy proved them wrong and will do so repeatedly. The hybridization of the Grading system by some devious kind of selection to favour a form of elite for the benefit of this country through Schooling takes us ironically backwards. It is a system that ,unlike the Grading system, competes with Democracy and not completes it. It is bound to fail within the next two generations of our people for no social systems can take on Democracy on any terms.

There are two aspects of the educational reform : the Engineering and the National. The former is copiously debated in terms of technicalities of admission, teachers availabilities, quality of education,abilities of students ,the gifted , scales of marks, among similar other things of common interests. When the reform is discussed along these lines of thoughts, the arguments of ?pros? versus ?cons? are almost balanced such that no final consensus is reachable. This is understandable in the sense that the engineering aspect does not gauge the essence of the reform but only its feasibility. However, the national aspect does , and few have enlightened interested parties on it.

Our biggest assets in Education are the teachers. We should call upon them and other educators to develop and create school and educational reforms of the future.

To understand the national aspect we need to find out what the reform does to the previous reform and how it contradicts some virtues of a democratic nation like ours.

Education through schooling is central to the goal of a democratic nation such as Mauritius.We need to build a popular intelligence capable of free thought and that would lead them to embrace the values of our plural nation. It should be a carrier for all citizens to aspire to the rights and benefits of our society so that they could create a community with a shared aim. We cannot reform an educational system for economical purposes only, but also for a shared social existence and the pursuit of the Mauritian possibility. We should prepare our students to be able to debate and decide, to weigh the individual and the common good and to make sound and sustainable decisions in favour of democratic ideals and thus keep at bay the threat of any form of segregational policies. Alas, these ideas would only be preached in schools but never enacted , for the 2006 reform is based on national industrial learning.

The reform is against the concept of mixed abilities. From a pedagogical viewpoint the idea of mixed abilities is that the able would tow intellectually the less able up the educational ladder. In so doing most people conclude that the able would be bogged down, since they are looking at the mixed abilities-interaction using a mechanical reasoning. And that where they are all wrong. There is more meaning in the mixed ability concept. It is in fact the most democratic idea within the previous reform. It makes way for the re-invention of Education by re-defining schooling as a social process conductive to the appreciation of collective work in a society. Mixed ability introduces a heterogeneity within the school whereby decent and humane students are formed and can cultivate appreciation in others with different abilities through communication chances between different groups with different perspectives. This provides an early commitment to communicate across multiple perspectives and thus helps to create stable and democratic future societies with a shared perspective which is the essence of a democracy. The 2006 reform with its national schools undoes that effort for it is bent on creating some into masters and the others into slaves.

Some proponents of the 2006 reform rejoice about its dose of competition. Others would yell out its psychological effects. Everyone sees his reason for or against competition and then makes it a national issue with a selfish attitude. Whatever the reasons, competition among students for food of the mind as they grow up, is immoral within a democracy.The hunger for knowledge is not timely programmed nor can it be forced.Yet the appetite for knowledge can be aroused in all students at all ages. It is this fact that the 2006 reform denies and thus creates the path for competition to lead to an unjust world.

If the school was a stage for a microcosm of a democratic society under the previous reform , then none others than the teachers could be the maestros of the symphonies of communications and connections between different parties. Our biggest assets in Education are the teachers. We should call upon them and other educators to develop and create school and educational reforms of the future. But are they up to the mark? We believe that they could be if we could invest in them such that they could surmount the walls of self-interest, walk across Union lines , put aside hidden agendas and make it their duty to educate policymakers and the public about what it takes to build a worldclass education.

Dr Dreewin RITTOO