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This is very worrying given that these pass rates don’t measure the entire harm done by our outdated educational system, one which relies too much on rote-learning.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.

At What Age Are Mauritians Dying These Days?

This is different from life expectancy which looks at how long a baby born in a year might expect to live on average. Which by the way was 77.69 years for women and 70.59 years for men back in 2012. So baby girls born 5 years ago should expect to watch 7 EPL seasons more than their male counterparts. And eat an extra 7,775 meals assuming they have their last kari pwason ek farata a few minutes before leaving. The numbers for Rodrigues are better: 78.47 years for women and 73.27 for men. That is baby girls in Rodrigues were expected to live an extra 9 months and baby boys 2.68 years more. The urit will definitely not be leaping for joy. The overall number for our Republic in 2015 was 74.6 years or 9.1 years less than world-beating Japan.

It hasn't always been like that. At least for women. Indeed female life expectancy for the island of Mauritius has been up to two-and-a-half years more than those for our sister island. This was true in 1983. The situation had reversed by 1992 and since 1998 women on the two islands were expected to live within one-and-half years of each other. Life expectancy for men in Rodrigues has been higher by at least two years between 2006 and 2012 even hitting a max of 3 years in 2009. Mauritian men could probably catch up by running at least 5 minutes every day. A Bus Rapid Transit system should make that a lot easier.

To answer the question in the title I looked at the age of the people who passed away in the last three days. The average for the 130 of our citizens who just departed is 68.06 years. The standard deviation is 15.22 years.

Air Asia Drops a Paradise, Adds Another One

Guess you heard they are pulling out for Mauritius. After only four months. Wonder why and how it is related to other recent airspace decisions. It's a loss for Mauritius as they offered interesting links to Asia at prices that partly made up for the continuous slaughtering of our currency. But they don't look too worried. They've just opened up a route to our sister paradise in the Pacific.

And of course proportional representation (PR) has created another huge mess in Rodrigues. A very comfortable majority of 10-2 for the OPR has melted into a regional government that will be a lot weaker. This of course comes right after the mess of 2012 when the wish of the voters ended up being frustrated with the same PR seats. What we saw on Monday was kind of expected wasn't it? Just like having mutating 'experts' in electoral reform put their hairdryer into high gear to try to confuse us with jargon they don't understand very well. Besides it was kind of obvious that the Duval Committee was on shaky grounds. And we know PR will produce unstable governments. After unstable governments. But did we have to use Rodrigues as a guinea pig? And that too for 5 years running?

Voters Pick Unsuccessful Candidates Wisely

These are the eight unsuccessful candidates in the 1982 elections that got the highest vote shares in their constituencies. They would have no doubt been a much better opposition than the one we got. Picking additional candidates like this will make sure we have an opposition of minimum size when we need it the most and dovetails nicely with a common sense return to 40+2 single member constituencies. This would also satisfy the UNHRC ruling in a thoughtful way without compromising any of the incredible advantages of our FPTP system. While avoiding the PR-related mess we witnessed in Rodrigues.

Mauritius Adjusts to Ban of Plastic Bags

In one grocery store I checked there were no paper bags to put your bread in. Some people just placed theirs on the damp cashier conveyor belt. You can only guess the source of that humidity. Our sister island Rodrigues has banned plastic bags for 18 months now. I wonder if we've learned everything we could from their experience?

It's a good move to ban these plastic bags. We should get rid of this nuisance next.

Tant vakwa here I come.

SAJ's Comments on Electoral Reform Refreshing

Rightly calling PR a komeraz. Who wouldn't? After seeing what happened to election results in Rodrigues. It's the same feeling one got when going through the dumb and dangerous Sithanen electoral galimatia: a heap of rubbish that doesn't take more than a couple of minutes to demolish. A bit like his 2005 promise that a flat tax would generate average robust growth rates of 8% forever after: 2015 will be the 5th consecutive year growth rates will be less than half of that.

Besides PR is so unLabour: Phillippe Rozemont was expelled from the Labour Party when he voted in favour of it. And roughly six decades later Navin Ramgoolam lost power and his seat after he flirted with PR. When an overwhelming number of Mauritians -- using an attractive feature of our wonderful FPTP system but one that Sithanen wants to get rid of with party lists -- said no to an electoral proposal that is vote wise and outcome foolish. There is no need to use a bazooka to get rid of a very mild headache.

Refreshing indeed. Reminded me of what another of our PMs said back in May 2010: "Ki zot tile? Pran zot dan godi dir ayo papa Euro! Euro! donn zot bibron? Pa Pwena! Devaliasyon zame tienn solisyon. Nu bizin vinn pli konpetitif".

First Vishnu Budget in 25 Years Now Available

Given that it was supposed to be a 75-minute budget I listened to most of it. It's a lot more pleasant than those that were presented between 2005 and 2010. There are a number of interesting things like gaming houses leaving city centres and the ban of plastic bags. Which has been in force for over nine months in Rodrigues. And they have increased their lead having recently announced the sorting of garbage like some countries do. Promising to implement the report which looked at making banking practices fairer is also not a bad idea.

Of course it's not a no-tax budget. Government has already quietly depreciated our rupee -- 12.8% as of today's speech -- and kept petrol prices higher than they ought to have been. The steady depreciation will make sure that Mauritius doesn't benefit from the collapse in oil prices. Again.

There are also other problems with this budget. Like inequality is likely to persist. More on this later.

What did you think?

Self-confessed Smart CEO Explains Rip-off

As newly-minted Chairman of MK. Blame it on our non-stop flights he says. So I guess the prices for the 20-minute flights to Reunion island will go down to more reasonable levels once they stop over on Ile de la Passe for a couple of hours. Why didn't we think of this before?

How then does he explain that it costs Rs5,500 to fly from Mauritius to Rodrigues and back but Rs8,300 if you start in Rodrigues instead?

Minister Proves He Can Do Better Than Forgetting Rodrigues

After Rodrigues was completely left out in one of his budget speech and most of the citizens of Mauritius in the others, Sithanen has now pushed out the limits of absurdity by discriminating against our fellow citizens who live in Rodrigues.

Indeed it cost a third cheaper to fly to there from Plaisance than if you begin your journey in Plaine Corail. Plus there are all kinds of stupid restrictions. Does that make any sense to you? Does it make more sense than the super high pump prices he's fleecing us with?

Thank God we're going to vote soon.

How to Fix our BOP Problems

That's kind of simple and, no, we don't need to depreciate our rupee as one ex-Governor has again been suggesting. We just need to reduce imports and increase exports. First, imports.

In 2008, we imported for Rs8.5 billion of fish and fish preparations, Rs3 billion of milk, Rs2 billion of vegetables and fruits, Rs1.5 billion of meat, Rs6 billion of road vehicles and Rs24 billion of petroleum products. That just doesn't sound right. If you recall, our exclusive economic zone is more than a 1,000 times larger than our land area or if you prefer each Mauritian can be supported by 1 square kilometre of sea (although it would make more sense to speak in terms of cubic kilometres, right?). So am positive we can cross that one out in a few years. There is a milk project underway so imports should decrease there too. As far as vegetables go we could adopt a few of Kreppalloo Sunghoon's recommendations: subsidise fertilizers, remove VAT on agricultural machinery and create a land bank to optimise the use of arable land. Likewise I am sure we can do something about all the meat we're bringing over from abroad by getting Rodrigues into the loop. Finally, we can reduce both the amount of fuel and road vehicles we import by having a sufficiently comfortable public transportation system. Having it run till 2 a.m. everyday will also make our economy more dynamic.

As far as exports go we should favour those that will provide meaningful jobs to a maximum of our fellow citizens. We don't need entrepreneurs of the sweat-shop variety whose greed knows no bounds.

Mr. Speaker, Sir, I now commend the Bill to the House.

P.S: BOP = Balance of Payments.