ZEP Education Revisited

Opinion

The objective of achieving zero failure should guide our decisions. Planning must begin immediately, particularly regarding teacher training and recruitment

By Sada Reddi

What happens, one can legitimately ask, when equity in education, particularly in primary education, is constantly deferred? Every year for the last fifty years, many children, after six or seven years of primary schooling, fail to attain the required standard of literacy and numeracy. As one ex-minister once reminded me some years ago, this means about ten thousand pupils without basic educational tools were being thrown into society, and in ten years this amounted to 100,000 pupils with all the consequences that this entailed. The situation is no different today. Fortunately, many of these pupils were able to catch up, make good use of their skills and aptitudes, and limit the initial drawbacks, leading a productive and meaningful life. Nonetheless, one cannot overlook the depressing annual statistics reminding us that among the unemployed, a high proportion are from those who have not successfully completed their primary education.

At present, with a new government and a new, proactive minister of education, there is consensus that it is high time to implement a zero-failure educational system. This is a very tall order for a new government, especially after the messy legacy left at all levels of our education system by a dogmatic, and self-opinionated minister. So far, despite some murmurs of impatience here and there, there is some satisfaction in the hope that the new minister means business. The few changes demanded by many before the election have since been implemented, pending a major conference on education in April.

The minister, who is all for dialogue with the numerous stakeholders, has placed the welfare of the child at the core of the education agenda. The national conference on education is expected to provide a blueprint that is implementable in the future. Some of the changes expected concern decentralization, more autonomy to rectors and head teachers, redesigning the curriculum to suit local conditions, redesigning textbooks to provide for home learning, and proper training courses for teachers. While all these issues and many more are important and will occupy the attention of the minister and all stakeholders, in my view, the basic and perennial problem at pre-primary and lower primary levels should trump all other issues and require the utmost attention of the Ministry to realize a ‘zero failure’ policy.

As said earlier, it is not going to be an easy task for the minister to deliver, given the inherited bureaucratic structure, but it is not impossible as the minister is deeply committed to completing his mission and will muster all the human and other resources to eliminate this wastage and inefficiency in primary education. The country cannot allow 30% of our pupils to leave primary schools without being equipped with the basic tools of numeracy and literacy, given that all our pupils are educable.

Learning deficits

A recent UNESCO report by an officer of the Ministry of Education, published in 2024, highlights some of the challenges. For example, in a data set of 7,597 grade 3 pupils in 2019, there was a response rate of 69 percent. In the domain of literacy, while 92 percent could distinguish phonemes, only 57 percent could retrieve information. What was not known was whether remedial education had been implemented to address the deficits in learning. Since the examination results at the end of primary education did not show any major progress in subsequent years, this suggests that remedial education, even if implemented, had not yielded the expected results.

At the primary level, especially and even at other levels, we should get rid of the notion, once and for all, that some pupils are educable and others are not, when we have done little to nurture their skills and competencies. However, one has to recognize that many of our children come from disadvantaged backgrounds, and this is particularly the case in most of the ZEP (Zones d’Éducation Prioritaires) schools. It is there that we should focus our efforts to improve teaching and learning, both now and in the future.

There is no shortage of reports and research on primary education in Mauritius to guide the ministry in its endeavour, not only from a theoretical perspective but also from empirical studies and feedback from practitioners. Two reports published by UNESCO, one in 2013 providing valuable insights on the strengths and weaknesses of ZEP schools, and the second one on evidence from diagnostic tests in lower primary education carried out in 2019 and published in 2024, provide much-needed guidance.

Given the view that ZEP schools should be priority number one for the minister, and not necessarily for the Ministry, it is for the minister to devise a well-thought-out policy on how to teach children from disadvantaged backgrounds. This implies that the teacher’s relationship with his pupils — the most important element in the education and development of the child — should receive the utmost attention in reforming the sector.

A reform is crucial because parents and educators know from experience, and this is confirmed in educational literature, that teachers play a crucial role in the education of not only the child but any student, from pre-primary to university. We all remember, at various stages of our education, the multiple roles played by educators in our educational and personal development, and we cherish the memories of these relationships.

Even today, parents who resort to private coaching often do so because of the trust that the personal attention students receive in a small group can offset the impersonal teaching in a bigger classroom. This is true at university level with tutorials and seminars. At the level of pre-primary and lower primary, the relationship between the educator and the child is invaluable for the emotional, social, and educational development of the child.

While such relationships may exist in many schools for many pupils, they may not be present for all children from disadvantaged backgrounds, especially in ZEP schools, for several reasons, which are well known to all and need not be elaborated.

‘Bridging the Gap’

But the big question remains: how to tackle this major problem at the classroom level? Educators and researchers may come up with various solutions, and these have been tried in the past through projects like ‘Bridging the Gap’, expansion of free pre-primary education, better classroom environments, support teachers, innovative teaching and learning methods, group work, and diagnostic assessments. But unfortunately, and regrettably, the results have been meagre. Not every child has received that personal attention, that initial personal bonding, which is the necessary basis for a child’s emotional well-being, upliftment, and development.

This is not to blame our teachers in the ZEP schools, who do their best in the circumstances, as they have not been trained to teach children with poor family or social backgrounds. This is the job of a specialist teacher and professional, and we do not have these specially trained educators in our school system. Even support teachers do not have those specialist skills. Even the Mauritius Institute of Education cannot be blamed, as the teacher education specialists may not have been trained to teach such teachers.

Writing in a different context, Rajendra Sewpersadsing, an experienced educationist, wrote in the forum of Le Mauricien on 11 January 2024, “I am afraid the training provided by MIE, particularly to EP educators, was far from the target. It is the opinion of many educators equally. I had surveyed the EP educators, and most of them have great difficulty in teaching students with big learning difficulties and students with acute behaviour problems.”

In such challenging circumstances, we have no choice but to rely on other countries, as a small nation like ours cannot afford to have specialists in every field. For instance, while we have orthopaedists, we may lack specialists in subspecialties such as spine surgery, trauma surgery, or paediatric surgery, which is why many patients are sent to India for treatment. Similarly, when dealing with the recent fire at Mare Chicose, we sought guidance from Reunion Island. There is no shame in acknowledging our limitations and seeking technical assistance from other countries, as we have consistently done in the past.

Achieving zero failure

In the field of education, for example, we could consider bringing in a few teacher trainers for the MIE to instruct one or two batches of students in a proper course designed to teach children with disabilities. Typically, such a course would be a full-time program lasting 12 months. If trainers cannot be made available in person, exploring online courses in partnership with a foreign university could be a viable alternative.

Another major factor concerns the recruitment of teachers for ZEP schools. Determining who the students for this new course will be requires careful consideration. It is not advisable to offer such courses to in-service teachers whose values may not align with the needs of ZEP schools or their pupils. A fresh batch of students could be considered if the recruitment criteria include values that assess their commitment to working in ZEP schools. Regarding teachers, it may be necessary to recruit from overseas, given the undeniable fact that 60 percent of teachers in ZEP schools seek transfers, as highlighted by a UNESCO report. Additionally, we have yet to address the other resources required to create a conducive school and classroom environment for both pupils and teachers, as well as the incentives needed to sustain teachers’ commitment.

The challenges mentioned above cannot be addressed immediately, but it is crucial to reflect on these issues now and develop a plan incorporating various scenarios. The objective of achieving zero failure should guide our decisions. Planning must begin immediately, particularly regarding teacher training and recruitment, as it takes at least a year to prepare a new batch of teachers. With the commitment of the government, ministers, and other stakeholders, it is hoped that the Ministry of Education will secure the necessary resources from the Ministry of Finance to plan effectively for the future well-being of all citizens. This will serve as the cornerstone of a policy aimed at fostering social inclusion.

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 17 January 2025