An Open Letter to Minister Dookun-Luchoomun

Dear Minister,

I read with interest on March 17th that your Ministry had made provisions for schooling for grades 7 to 9 to continue online using 994 videos and 70 questionnaires through the student support programme (SSP) should Covid-19 force us to shutdown schools.

As we already have our first three cases of that virus I am guessing the SSP will be extended to the other grades of the secondary curriculum. Considering that there might not be a lot of good news* coming our way for the next little while and that students could be at home for weeks if not months I would like to make an appeal that you allow all the students who didn’t get 5 credits at the SC level recently to go through into Lower 6 – which for now will be their homes – and have access to the relevant parts of the SSP. This will help soften the blow of the pandemic.

Thank you.
Best,
Sanjay Jagatsingh


*What Covid-19 Will Do to Mauritius, S. Jagatsingh, March 2020. 

Why Are HSC Pass Rates Dipping?

SC Pass Rate Falls to 20-Year Low

As the chart shows it has fallen steadily in Mauritius for the last decade after stagnating for another one. The lack of progress in the latter has enabled a rapidly-improving Rodrigues to catch up with her bigger sister and even overtake her in 2011 – way to go Rodrigues! But things have deteriorated significantly there in the past four years with the pass rate collapsing to levels not seen in fifteen years. 

This is very worrying given that these pass rates don’t measure the entire harm done by our outdated educational system, one which relies too much on rote-learning. They definitely do not because for one Cambridge says 70% of the students have passed but the Ministry decides that 70% can’t progress to Lower 6. Besides the collapse is too significant to brush it aside with the recommendation that students should work harder. A better approach is required so that we fully grasp what’s happening and respond appropriately. This should include asking independent psychometricians to check if exam difficulty explains any of the mess. And listening to Ken Robinson who reminds us that intelligence has three characteristics https://youtu.be/iG9CE55wbtY. But not before the Minister of Education makes an evaluation of the 3-credit policy public. 

Finally a former Education Minister mentioned recently that most of the HSC laureates come from well-to-do families thereby confirming that the underprivileged have the odds stacked against them. These can be improved by allocating these scholarships to poor:average:rich in the ratio 45:35:20 after bonds are reinstated. The current setup might also need to be reviewed.

Why Dookun-Luchoomun Must Allow 3 Credits to Go Through This Time

Because she doesn’t want to make a massive blunder like Nando Bodha did in early 2015 when he scrapped the point system without assessing its effectiveness and replaced it with a more ‘user-friendly’ alternative. As the chart shows road fatalities for the past five years have never been lower than the level they reached in 2014. Unlike in Singapore (in green) where they’ve fallen in every one of those years save 2018 when they increased by two. In fact if we had managed to have their cumulative number of fatalities over that period – which is setting the bar too low given that they have four-and-a-half times more people than us – we would have saved 75 lives between 2015 and 2019. Mr. Bodha has also been working hard to make the traffic Frankenstein meaner and road-users have already noticed that his tram which he calls a metro didn’t solve anything as expected. 

Instead, Ms. Luchoomun should rather want to take 2020 to properly assess the life and academic trajectories of those thousands of citizens that were allowed in Lower Six with three credits for a number of years and to compare them with those of their friends that had a few more credits. This will provide her with the hard facts of the matter, essential ingredients for good decision-making. My hunch is that there will not be a big difference between the two groups. Definitely not large enough to take the kind of risk the Minister is currently assuming. Too much is at stake here. The more so that we may currently have the worst substance abuse problem in our history and our old industrial education system that relies too much on rote-learning is not adequate anymore for a hyper connected world. Besides Cambridge has computed that 70.93% of the most recent SC-takers have passed their exams – these overlapped an election campaign. That’s 13,235, not 5,518, and therefore means that the British examiner has deemed that even 2,129 of the 3,092 who got 1 credit have passed. Government should in fact allow everyone who took these exams to either have a place in Lower Six or in a polytechnic and to move ahead – Jony Ive isn’t going to be there forever.

Ms. Luchoomun will also want to contact the OECD fast so we participate in PISA 2021 and find out if we have improved from the 56th place we clocked in Maths in PISA 2009, the only time we ever participated in this serious survey. As for the 5 credits needed by the PSC they can be kept but arrangements must definitely be made so that SC exams are available every three months or better still online. The blah blah blah about the necessity of shutting out any student without five credits otherwise we’ll end up with a stupid elite will die out rapidly if we consider two facts. The first one is that our savings culture was killed by someone who did very well in his HSC Economics exam and then proceeded to the LSE on a special scholarship when one Kher Jagatsingh was Minister of Education. The other is that a Minister who has a first degree in law wanted to literally sell our clouds because he didn’t like the CWA hotline.

Worried parents should of course get in touch with their MPs and Ms. Luchoomun. Because we don’t have recall elections yet. 

What Does Singapore Know That We Don't?

Plenty. Let's take their transportation policy for example. Why have they been removing cars from their roads for three straight years? Btw, this has brought back the car pool there to levels not seen in 8 years. Well they are decreasing the number of cars because it is a very inefficient technology. A car is idle more than 90% of the time. So it's pretty unproductive. And it is costly in so many other ways: time wasted in traffic which could be put to better use, burning fuel, pollution, stress and so on. The so on has to include all the space it uses and the other dimensions of traffic that slow you down.

Now when you look at what is being done here it's hard not to conclude that our transportation policy is being crafted in a very amateurish manner. I was totally horrified to hear my friend Georges Chung – an excellent economics teacher at the HSC level but a rather lousy policy-maker – say that one of the assumptions in the transportation planning involving the Metro Express is that the number of cars would be increasing by 5% every year. He obviously hasn't had a good look at the data – he's not the only one for sure – and apprehended the consequences. And it's not the first time. Indeed he has been a huge advocate of 'competitive depreciation' for many many years even suggesting that it is painless. The relevant data seem to tell an entirely different story.

Nando Bodha appears quite overwhelmed too. He scrapped the point system a couple of years ago. Quite a sloppy decision. He's currently spending billions to decongest the road network. Enlisting the help of the Korean Expressway Corporation is not a proof of mindfulness. They couldn't care less to help you saddle yourself with a prehistoric technology as long as they get paid. One that requires the transformation of our sacred Champ de Mars into a dinosaur park. That too after the obliteration of La School.

We're far better off with a bus rapid system (BRT) and freezing duty-free privileges for a couple of years. It's time for Lepep to hit the pause button. And organise a referendum.

MGI Bags Four HSC Laureates

Quite a performance. Which is one more than CSE. But five less than RCC. The QEC powerhouse had a terrible harvest this year: only eight. The other nice thing is that 'small' colleges had their champs too. Some probably for the first time. Including College Ste Marie a mixed college just like the MGI. Hopefully policy-makers will look at this data carefully and update their policies.

Anyway here's the list.

What Will Municipal Voters Do?

Vote for the MMM because Lepep ended up with about 10 MPs more than what was necessary? Or stick with Lepep based on what they've achieved in the first five months of their mandate? The plus points are mostly the increase in pension payments and fully subsidising the SC/HSC exams. The appointment of Ms. Fakim as head of state is definitely a history-making event but that doesn't really change the lot of the victims of the neocons.

The main negatives are the significant depreciation of our rupee while the BOM supposedly waited for the budget to set the tone, the joke of the Finance Minister claiming that his bland budget was a no-tax one, not passing on the collapse of oil prices and of course the BAI affair. The latter has embroiled Government into a thick cloud of confusion and suspicion that is not going away any time soon. Indeed the BAI saga is so far looking more like a political vendetta than a ponzi scheme. That's especially evident when you consider the kind of help our Governments have dished out to hubris-infected companies in the past. There have also been surprising statements by the President of the Bar Council and many are not happy with how the biometric ID project has evolved.

We'll find out on Monday how voters weighed the facts.

Government To Destroy Biometric Database

This piece of good news was announced yesterday in the 2015-2019 Programme Speech. Along with a number of laudable intentions like

• making SC/HSC exams free;
• an SME bank which will invest Rs10 billion over the next five years;
• a minimum wage bill;
• focus on job creation for Mauritians: 15,000 will be created every year with many in the public sector;
• a football academy will be set up;
• ensuring competitive energy prices;
• setting up a vascular surgery unit to reduce the number of amputations;
• and organising referendums on crucial national issues. 

There are also some very vague promises such as 'inflation will be kept under control'. Hmm. An inflation target is a must for two reasons: one to preserve the hard-won anti-inflation capital and two to keep depreciation-happy Basant Roi on a tight leash. Government also wants to include a dose of PR in our electoral system. That's a dangerous proposition that needs extensive debate and a referendum.

Let's see how well this plan is implemented.

Xavier Starting on Right Foot

Paying a full compensation for salaries up to Rs7,000 per month and a partial one up to Rs30,000 has been well received. And given that the minimum compensation paid will not be lower than Rs330 someone making Rs3,000/month will be getting an increment of 11% which is almost twice the inflation rate.

And as noticed by several people including Reaz Chuttoo of the Confederation des Travailleurs Du Secteur Prive (CTSP) the Government seems to be acknowledging that a minimum salary shouldn't be lower than Rs7,000. Besides SC/HSC fees are now paid by the State for family income not exceeding Rs14,500. That's another hint.

XLD's move also smashes a myth that a finance minister will have more consideration for the lower-income groups if he sported the ancestor of havaianas when he was a teenager. Especially after claiming to have read all the books on poverty.

Yep. Mr Chuttoo, reminded us in an interview that the salary threshold for receiving a full compensation was reduced by 40% from Rs4,500 to Rs2,700 in 2008. Which was apparently the year of the Bumper Crop... 

1 Less Credit Now Needed To Access A-Level Education

As announced by Minister Bunwaree. What do you think about it?