Can Mauritius Do Better Than 56th in Maths?

That's how we did in the 2009 PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) survey. That puts us in the company of Thailand but a lot better than Qatar (80th) and Ghana (88th). But kind of far from the UK (28th) and Germany (16th). I think it was the only time we ever participated in this interesting exercise. Germany has used her PISA experience to improve her education system. Surely if its valuable to the exportweltmeister it will be for us too. Besides don't we pride ourselves on being quite good in the Queen of Sciences?

Speaking of mathematics there's also an important competition that we seemed to have missed since it was first organised back in... 1959. The 58th edition of the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) will take place in Rio de Janeiro between July 12 and 23. 109 countries have already confirmed their participation. Including plenty of African nations like Algeria, Botswana, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, South Africa and Tanzania. In last year's competition Thailand came out 12th. Even Syria will be in Rio. So should Mauritius. Details are at http://www.imo-official.org/.

Mauritius in 2017

Thousands will again be denied a place in a secondary school because of a badly designed learning experience. Our roads will kill another 140. Eight or nine amputations will be performed every week or about 400 for the full year. Mauritius will shutdown around Saint Valentine as soon as we get some heavy rainfall. The CWA will announce harsher cuts right after. We will send a team to the IMO for the first time and get ready to participate in PISA 2018.

Roughly 1,000 people will be thrown into poverty. Every three months. Thanks to the trickle-down economics which has been going on for a decade now. The flat tax trap will cause the GDP shortfall to reach a trillion rupees about half of which would have happened on Lepep's watch. This will make government increasingly unpopular. Voters will keep on getting smarter. And that will be bad news for our political class. The water supply will improve as Bagatelle dam comes into operation in the second half of the year. Potential tragedy of a horrific number of fatalities during Porlwi by Light.

Quite a few of the bad events don't need to happen or can be mitigated. Like how does Mahebourg by Light sound? We could also avoid several road deaths if Lepep recognises that it might have acted in haste and brings an improved point system back.

IMO 2015 Starts July 10 in Chiang Mai

And ends a day later in the beautiful northern Thai city. IMO is the International Mathematical Olympiad which is an annual event -- it began in 1959 with 7 countries -- where high school students find out how they measure up by answering two sets of questions. More than a 100 countries participated in last year's edition which was held in Cape Town. And won by China. Which won it 13 times in the last 16 years -- it came second in the other three years. Mauritius has yet to participate in its first IMO. Unlike Tunisia and South Africa which have gone to 23 of them.

Participating in an IMO is quite straightforward. It's high time we get into this. And see if we can do better than a 56th place.