allAfrica.com: Mauritius: CPE - Could Do Much Better! (Page 1 of 1)

The report on the examinations of the Certificate of Primary Education for last year has been released. Once again, it points out the same weaknesses as in the past years.

Year after year, the Mauritius Examinations Syn-dicate (MES) points out the major hurdles that the candidates of the Certificate of Primary Education (CPE) face. But its recommendations never seem to have any impact. Rote learning, inaccurate sentences, lack of imagination to develop stories or thinking skills to attempt problems are just a few breaches highlighted in the report. More worrying is the pass rate that has gone down from 67.9% in 2006 to 66.2% last year.

When it comes to essay writing, pupils tend to lack the imagination to develop stories beyond the points given in the outline. In other cases, language difficulties make it difficult for them to convey their ideas properly. The analysts of the English paper note that "many candidates seem under the impression that using expressions and phrases learnt by heart will impress examiners. However, this leads to unnatural sentences, like 'in the twinkling of an eye, I was surprised".

They also point out that almost all stories start with a stereotype like: "It was a Saturday morning. The sun was shining brightly in the blue sky." The MES report considers that "there are more interesting ways to start narratives, like direct speech or with a proverb and it would be useful to encourage pupils to move away from the 'It was Saturday morning' "approach".

Many candidates struggle to write a variety of sentence types but most gave simple sentences like "My father picked up the purse. We went to the police station. There was a policeman there." These could have been turned into complex sentences with the proper use of conjunctions but "it was rarely seen. Practice in the classroom could help. Pupils could be given simple sentences and asked to find ways in which they could be combined".

Subject-verb agreement, with appropriate tenses and right verb forms, as well as longer pieces of prose remain challenging for a great number of pupils. The influence of French/Creole syntax was also visible in this year's paper.

The same point is made in the part of the report, which analyses the French paper. Using the right tenses is a real challenge. Candidates also tend to mix French with Creole. The MES feels that more emphasis should be laid on "discussion, reasoning and justifying the answers during the reading comprehension class that should be more alive".

72.3% of candidates passed in Mathematics. Here also, it is noted that students are "too rigid in their thinking". This shows up "in the mechanical way in which they answer questions". The MES discourages this approach at school level. "A more pedagogical methodology should be adopted in which the development of rational thinking is given prime value."

Need for more innovative strategies

As the report puts it, "the problem remains mainly because candidates rely excessively on the memorisation of relationships, which exist between different units of measurements. Many candidates even memorise the operation to perform for the conversion. Not enough emphasis is laid on the acquisition of a visual feel of dimensions involving units".

As a result, candidates often have no sense of the answers they give. This was apparent in question 36 in particular, with so many candidates finding '1 m 34 cm' as equal to '1.34 cm'! Clearly here the candidates knew that there is a factor of 100 relating metres to centimetres. But whether they should multiply or divide 1 m 34 cm by 100 could not be remembered.

"Teaching 'measures' through memorisation or mass practice does little to develop students' spatial sense. More innovative teaching strategies should be used, where increased opportunities are created for students to experience dimensions in real life."

Another recurrent problem is the level of carelessness displayed by candidates. Many, essentially good ones, lost considerable marks because they did not read instructions properly and through careless slips in calculations.

In Science, the percentage pass this year has slightly increased compared to last year (2006 - 72.0% and 2007 - 72.3%) and the number of candidates scoring an A or A+ is appreciably high - 34.3% (boys) and 39.5% (girls).

Reading English was not a big problem but the major difficulty was to write the words. Even a simple word such as 'rain' was the cause of major difficulties. Once again, the analysts noticed that many answers were learnt by heart without the pupils understanding the scientific concepts behind the lesson. "Learning by heart does not help the children to apply their knowledge, to interpret visual diagrams and to answer correctly to the situation given in the question. Many children only grasped some key words and answered to the question from the bank of knowledge they have acquired often through 'rote learning'."

In History & Geography, the performance declined (75.6% in 2006 compared to 70% in 2007). One of the main reasons is: "The majority of candidates did not show appropriate skills nor sound understanding of the subject content. Different items and questions on the learning competencies in the syllabus affected the performance of candidates. This is most probably due to superficial learning and coaching strategies as well as weaknesses in language skills."

When everything has been said, the big question is: will the comments of this report have the desired impact? or will it go unnoticed? Last week, the MES had working sessions with primary school inspectors who will now have to pass on the information at school level.

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