The system based on tough competition at the age of 11 creates winners and losers. Those on the sunny side of this race obtain a seat in the mainstream (secondary) while those who, by the conspiracy of circumstances, find themselves on the stormy side either join the pre-voc stream or the streets. This is the fate of any system that is driven by achievement at its best, irrespective of conditions of learning and home background. Education is apprenticeship and a race discourages those who start weak, become strong on the way and end up excellent.

The repercussion of the competitive mentality that cannot be reconciled with lifelong learning is the fate of many average performers at HSC who do not find a seat at the University of Mauritius. A girl with 2A and 1B has been refused a seat for Law. Holders of C, which is not an opprobrious performance, must seek opportunities abroad at exorbitant costs. It is fortunate that Sithanen?s 2008-2009 budget caters for all HSC passes to increase gross enrolment rate for tertiary education.

● <B> Sequel of CPE</B>

The biting sequel of the CPE drama lies in the growing resentment of a few schools to lodge prevocational students in cohabitation with the rest. This is typical of the arrogance certification generates in an achievement-obsessed society. Why are a few rectors refusing this cohabitation? They do not find how integration of opposites can take place. In fact these are the very persons who would segregate Science students from those taking Humanities, Art subjects or Commercial subjects, or still technical subjects. As a student of Latin, Greek and Modern Languages at RCPL in the sixties, I hardly rubbed shoulders with Science students. If there is no integration within a school implementing one curriculum, how can we expect integration between learners of two different curricula?

● <B>Balkanization of the class</B>

The home and the native endowment of our children separate them and the school is hardly able to create a national, unified consciousness among them all. Children, innocent of mind, are indoctrinated at home against children of less privileged backgrounds and they live with the suspicion of being robbed, molested and perverted by children of modest origins. A class is balkanized into groups, clans and sects and our youth run the risk of being more fanatical, prejudiced and biased than their forebears. The portrait of deeper Mauritius can be seen in the body language, aloofness and hauteur of a few who look down upon supposed peers. Money and other means drive wedges between our adults and children alike. In these circumstances, it is not strange to encounter adults who associate indiscipline, all the sins related to poverty, idleness, low intelligence with prevocational students, when unruly behaviour is known to plague even our best mainstream schools.

● <B>The ghetto syndrome</B>

Just as it is unfair to lump together in a ?repeater? class all those who have failed, it is as unhealthy to confine pre-voc students in a prevocational school. The ghetto syndrome that accompanies this mode accentuates poverty and exacerbates the symptoms and problems. Low integration is known to affect many school leaders who dismiss all pre-voc related actions by delegating the responsibility to a junior, deputy or senior teacher among the pre-voc staff. There is no interaction between rector and pre-voc staff on the curricula implemented by them. The mainstream staff looks down upon the pre-voc staff with condescending mockery and disdain, and a certain feeling of inferiority nags the pre-voc teacher who lacks the skills to interact with children who come from challenging envirment.

● <B>Rules for integration</B>

If the ministry desires both streams to cohabit, there are categorical imperatives to ensure:

(a) That teachers are trained to teach the pre-voc curriculum in a way that differentiates them from mainstream learners. In fact, all our children need a new pedagogy. The teaching method used in classes today is obsolete and ineffectual. Pre-voc pupils have a learning style with certain specificities, which must be respected. We must be rehabilitate these pupils into individuals capable of learning independently.

(b) The curriculum must contain opportunities to develop cognitive skills but also manipulative skills. The budget earmarks funds for an alternative pathway. It is time to provide pre-voc classes with tools, simple equipment and teachers of vocational subjects. We should not foist an academic curriculum, which is being implemented in pre-voc classes for lack of funds.

(c) Teachers must learn how to boost the self-esteem of children who are bruised by poverty and whose wounds have been compounded by two successive failures. Revalorizing the child implies that he should respect himself. We must learn that teaching can take place only in an atmosphere of mutual respect.

(d) Integration emanates from a consciousness of sharing. When curriculum divides, everything else separates. That is why it is desirable that mainstream teachers enter pre-voc classes to teach their own subjects at a different level. Rectors must make themselves, their presence, their care felt by pre-voc students. Many such students in our schools do not even know the name of their rector. Management of the pre-voc stream is part and parcel of the whole school management. Just as pre-voc and mainstream share common experiences on Sports Day, it is inevitably important to make both streams undergo common experiences. Celebrate success in the pre-voc stream just as it is done for the mainstream. The whole school atmosphere must banish the least smack of snobbishness, inferiority, psychological insecurity.

(e) There are better ways of eradicating indiscipline than by repressive or punitive methods. Our teachers are ill-equipped to face indiscipline because they are the products or have become the products of a culture of sophistication. PRB?s recommendation of a post of counsellor shows that the ministry realizes that every teacher must have counselling capabilities. It is indiscipline that makes our gentlemen and lady teachers of the mainstream say: ?We don?t need them.? Modern man, in a race for achievement, has been weaned of humanity. The unfortunate have become a burden they want to divest themselves of. Success mania deprives us of active sympathy. We cannot make of pre-voc students scapegoats of our inability to deal with violence and aggressiveness of our children - products of our own upbringing and economic system. Let us realize that we are creating pre-voc students even among our successful ones. 25% of our students fail miserably as from Form IV. We show the same cruelty and indifference to them. Thank God an Empowerment Programme takes care of all. But the school itself cannot care for them. That is the cause for concern.

● <B>Agenda for research</B>

If the ministry retains integration, this is an agenda for research, development and implementation. We have to work on the appropriate medium of instruction, the appropriate curriculum, the appropriate pedagogy, the suitable enabling school environment and, above all, an enabling school leadership. Very often we castigate the parent for all the misdemeanours of the child, as though he had no will separate from his progenitors. We should not always blame a system when implementers are weak.

<B>By Santosh Mahadeo, </B> <I>[email protected] former director of Curriculum, Ministry of Education</I>