66.17% of passes at CPE level, only a slight drop of 1.76% this year does not seem alarming either to the minister of Education or the director of the MES. It is, indeed, easier to hide behind figures and not talk about the tragedy of the Mauritian child! What is implied here is that, out of the 27,000 candidates who sat for the CPE examination this year, only 17,866 children have been successful. What is not stated here is that unfortunately not all of them have got the aggregate needed to be admitted in a secondary school. Some 8,000 children or more have failed the CPE after spending six years in a primary school. Is this acceptable?

?This is a transitional period?, says our minister of Education. So what? Should we not worry about so many children who have failed? We cannot be satisfied with such excuses! Thousands of our ten and eleven year olds fail each year and we are not bothered by this situation. Mauritians are more concerned by those who are getting A and A+. As a matter of fact, it is not only these 8,000 children who have failed ? it is a failure for our education system itself. A system, which still encourages a cut-throat competition in which young children have to take private tuition, seven days a week, to be in the rat-race for the A+. Is this how we cater for the holistic development of our learners?

It is also easy to put the blame on teachers. There is a rush to complete the curriculum and they do not provide learners with the opportunity to be critical and to apply their knowledge. The emphasis is only on rote learning ? ?parrot-fashion learning?. True! But why should teachers only carry the monkey on their backs! Has the curriculum been changed to enable our primary school children to develop their thinking skills and apply their knowledge? Is there a new syllabus at primary level, which provides scope for the teaching of general knowledge to our young learners?

In fact, it is the question papers that have changed. The MES wants our learners to use their logic, to reason and apply their knowledge without ensuring that they have been trained and are ready to answer to such questions. Any change in an education system begins with changes in the general aims and objectives of the system itself, changes in the curriculum, syllabuses and text books, changes in approaches to learning and methodology before implementing them, ultimately, in schools and the classroom. It is only then, with the appropriate training and experience that the teacher will be able to devise teaching strategies that will enable our children to become critical thinkers and learning will become more meaningful to them.

Evaluation, such as this summative CPE examination, comes only in the final stage of this long teaching and learning process. The irony in our country is that we begin by the end! The questions have been modified and teachers and learners were left to discover them in the question papers! Imagine the shock and confusion of our candidates who discovered these changes in the examination room! They must have been at a loss and it is not surprising that so many children have failed. Our learners have, definitely, been penalised! It also did not help them to give the best of themselves when the question papers carried mistakes, questions (considered as general knowledge questions) which are not found in the History and Geography books either in Standards IV, V or VI and pie charts that would have been more suitable for students at lower secondary level.

How are these question papers prepared? Has there been a test plan? What were the objectives of this examination? As teachers, we are trained to prepare a test blueprint or table of specifications before setting our question papers so that each learner gets a fair chance to be successful. We must cater for our different types of learners, whether low or high achievers. We must ensure that our question papers strike the right balance between questions that will test our learners? lower order thinking skills, such as knowledge and comprehension, and higher order skills, such as application, analysis, synthesis and finally evaluation. Who will score the highest mark, who will get an A+ is not our main concern! It brings us more satisfaction when our low achievers are successful than to see that our best candidates have scored 89 or 90 marks.

Instead of discriminating between an A and an A+, why not consider introducing a differential pedagogy right from standard one. This will enable teachers to differentiate between our high and low achievers, slow learners, children with learning difficulties and those who might be gifted, so that we can best cater for the needs of all our Mauritian learners; and our education system will not be a failure.

Shardha SANDAPEN