The Bureau of Catholic Education (BEC) seized the opportunity of the World Literacy Day last Friday to make a plea for the use Creole as teaching medium in primary schools. Its two-day seminar tried to convince the authorities that this may be the main solution to combat high failure rates in the Certificate of Primary Education (CPE) exams. Even though the minister of Education, Dharam Gokhool, insisted that he remains open to any initiative to reduce failure rates, he did not appear enthusiastic about implementing Creole in all schools.

BEC director, Hervé de St Pern, is in a good position to recommend the use of Creole. The Prevokbec, set up by Dev Virahsawmy, is already using Creole as a pedagogical tool and it has proved successful in helping pupils towards a better understanding of what they are taught. For the BCE director, there is no reason not to use this system in other prevocational schools.

Moreover, tests conducted by the BCE in May and July this year have proved encouraging. 197 students from Form I did the tests in Creole while 192 students from Form III did them in English. The tests were identical in content and form. The results were astonishing: pupils in Form I had better results in both tests.

In view of these results, Jimmy Harmon of Prevokbec explains: “We can say that Creole tends to facilitate learning to read and write.” Even though he does not reject the whole idea and says he is ready to help in other such pilot-projects, the minister of Education was very cautious in his approach to introducing Creole.