Open letter to the Minister of Education

Dear Minister,

In the press conference you gave on Thursday 29th December 2005, as reported in the following-day edition of l?express, under the heading ?Sélection nationale pour les collèges d?élite?, you are quoted as having said: ?Nous allons formaliser l?admission pour les neuf collèges nationaux.?

It is understood that the nine national colleges are the ones that have been converted into Form VI colleges and include the Royal Colleges, the QEC and the MGI and admission to which would henceforth be subject to criteria which you would soon announce.

I wish to convey to you my apprehension regarding the introduction of this new criteria envisaged, which might, in effect, take us back to the situation which prevailed before the last educational reform.

You cannot be oblivious of the fact that successive governments have been for years trying unsuccessfully to put an end to what had been described as the rat race, that plagued our educational system and denied a large number of our children the right to their childhood, through the highly competitive examination system prevalent in our primary schools. Right from the start of schooling, the child was made to understand that his sole objective was all work and no play ? in the classroom, in the private-tuition garage and at home ? to be, at the end of the primary-school days, among the chosen ones, even if in the process he turned out to be a dull boy or a dull girl. You must still remember how resourceful parents came out to be in order to get their children admitted to star schools. They spent money, energy and sleepless nights watching over their children busy learning parrot-fashion. It was a competition not only between children but also between parents, which resulted in very few winners and a large number of losers.

The much-decried CPE, which gave access, through the ranking system, to the prized colleges was finally replaced, as a result of the regionalization of our educational system, by a more humane one, based on grading and where the stress on the child is reduced and the parents more or less relieved, considering the fact that a ?good? secondary school will be made available to his child, within reasonable distance from his residence.

I contend that the present system, which, everything else being equal, tends to provide the same facilities and opportunities to all children does not stifle the emergence of an elite. The emulation-factor is still present and the most gifted children are in not penalized by the system.

My reaction may be considered premature but I would rather err on the side of haste than caution in a matter of such vital importance.

I entreat you, Mr Minister, in the name of the children of this country, to reconsider your decision of introducing or re-introducing a system whereby the rat race will reep in through the back-door and deprive our children of their right to blossom into well-balanced indivi-duals ? a system which in the past has shown how unjust and at times cruel it can be.