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Mauritius: The 'Literacy and Numeracy Strategy' Urgently Needs a New Lease of Life
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L'Express (Port Louis)
COLUMN
28 August 2007
Posted to the web 28 August 2007
Patrick Hilbert
Port Louis
Four years after its introduction, the national program to improve the basic skills of pupils in primary school desperately does not seem to have served its real purpose.
Twenty-five minutes should be assigned to making sure that all pupils can read, write and calculate, according to the National literacy and numeracy strategy.
If the initiative is generally appreciated by the education sector, in practice, it has disappeared from the classroom and the daily 25 minutes assigned to the National Literacy & Numeracy Strategy (NLNS) project are being used as normal class. Conscious of the problem, the ministry of Education is looking into ways to revamp it, as the minister of Education, Dharam Gokhool, confirmed lately.
"The NLNS is being revisited to entail a better and more efficient and effective co-operation from all stakeholders. And it can be said that literacy activities are an integral part of this strategy because they aim at making the student become more creative and understand the mechanisms of reading and calculation. We are gradually introducing a system of regular feedback to follow the progress of our children."
When and how the project will be restyled is unknown but things definitely have to move fast, for our children's sake. Even if the Certificate of Primary Education (CPE) results have been increasing year after year to attain 73% last year, a consequent number of pupils still end their primary cycle without being able to read, write or calculate.
The best proof of this is the CPE reports of the last decade which have been rather severe when it comes to literacy and numeracy. They reveal clearly that a large number of candidates perform poorly whenever they are requested to demonstrate those two skills.
Other documents have come to the same conclusion. "Many cannot write a very short simple sentence. Many CPE candidates reveal poor reading strategies to extract meaning from relatively easy texts", points out the report on the survey of "needs of upper primary school teachers for support" finalised by the Mauritius College of the Air last April.
Launched in June 2003, the NLNS aimed to "help pupils master the basic skills of literacy, help raise standards in languages, ensure that a majority of pupils (at least 80%) are able to continue learning", according to the strategic document elaborated then. But mainly because of a lack of supervision and guidance at school level and effective monitoring, the project has missed its targets.
In September 2005, a damning report pointed out the problems and made recommendations submitted by a committee comprising senior officials from the ministry and representatives from the Government Teachers' Union (GTU) and the Bureau of Catholic education (BCE). "Nothing has changed since. We're still waiting. This project has to be maintained, there's no doubt about that, but it has to be improved if we truly want to reach a real world-class quality education and have better CPE results", states Vinod Seegum, chairman of the GTU.
Alain Doolub, director of primary education at the BEC, confirms. "We don't know where we stand with this project, because it has been a while since the ministry talked to us about it. I don't know what they are up to." Other stakeholders express the same view. A member of the Mauritius Head Teachers' Association thinks that the NLNS has had positive results, but "it is not implemented as it should". Blaming the inspectors, he commented that they don't feel involved.
A right feeling! Teachers, deputy head teachers and head teachers are paid between Rs 550 and Rs 1 100 monthly as allowance to implement the project depending on their experience and grade, while inspectors don't earn a cent. "We're the only ones who are not paid for it, so we don't do this additional work", comments an inspector.
It is also a fact that only general purpose teachers are involved, even though Asian language teachers, who are supposed to assist GP teachers, are paid at the same rates. However, they are not present during the period reserved for NLNS, at least most of the time.
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Some think the strategy should be part of the whole education process. "In our schools, it is integrated in the timetable. It leaves more time for the teacher to pay more attention to pupils who need it most thanks to those 25 minutes of extended time", says Alain Doolub. Those 25 minutes for the NLNS have been added to the normal school hours.
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