Less Than 60% Effectively Passed the CPE this Year

How I got that number? Easy, I included the number of students that the press told us back in October were going to take part in these exams, 26,689, instead of the number of students who actually took the exam, 23,664. So that some 3,025 kids did not take the exam which works out to a little over 11%.

They didn't show up for probably some of the same reasons that 30% grown ups don't show up at their CFA Level I Exam. One such reason is fear. Which kind of makes the case to lower the difficulty of the CPE. Of course you realise that overlooking little details like this will make us a lesser nation than we ought to have been.

7,707 Failed the CPE Because The Exam is Too Difficult

And the Minister of Education should simply have bell-curved the results to make 5,340 more students pass. This would have brought the pass rate to 90% which is probably a more reasonable number. The other 10% could have been offered a seat in a vocational school to become great manual workers as I suppose we would like great plumbing jobs to become standard in Mauritius in the future.

And students should be given many opportunities to switch streams throughout their lives. In the meantime it's a good idea to have psychometricians start working immediately to bring the exam to the right level.