Automatic Promotion

Mauritius Times – 70 Years

By Peter Ibbotson

This is a vexed problem in Mauritius. Many people are not yet convinced that it is the right way to have tackled one of the many educational problems faced in the last ten years. I would suggest, however, that the fault lies neither with the fact of automatic promotion nor with the teachers who have had to cope with its effects. The fault lies — as it has for nearly ten years — with the unsatisfactory state of affairs at the very top of the Education Office.

After Mr Ward’s departure, we had two Directors of Education, Messrs. Opper and Snell, who, though doubtless estimable gentlemen, lacked the necessary common touch. Both were aloof from the public. Both seemed to lack the realization that good public relations count for a great deal in departments such as Education, Public Assistance, and so on. In any case, Mr Opper was on loan to UNESCO for much of his tenure, and his deputy, Mr Ardill, was more than once detached from the Education Department to act as publicity officer for one or other VIP (Princess Margaret’s visit, for example).

Had the necessity for automatic promotion been presented in the right way, much of the public disquiet which still exists would not exist. Automatic promotion is a means of avoiding wastage among school attendees. In the past in Mauritius, and in the present in a number of colonies (and, for that matter, independent states), many children enrolled at school for the first year, but — since compulsory school attendance was lacking — left school after only a year or two instead of completing their full primary school course. Some left even before they had learned to read and write. Why was this?

In 1950, in Sarawak, there were 21,708 children in the lowest class; only 9,256 were under eight, while as many as 356 were over thirteen! Many of these 12,000 children aged nine or more were in the lowest class because they were repeating the class year after year, while brighter children were promoted over their heads. “The clear water flows over the dam; the silt accumulates at the bottom. Pity the children; and pity the teacher. What frustration and waste of effort!” The quoted comment is Mr Ward’s.

Automatic promotion is a means of ensuring that children do not get stuck in the lowest class for several years. It is a means of ensuring that children stay at school long enough to benefit from their schooling. In 1952, a conference of educationists was held at Cambridge to discuss education in the colonies, with special reference to Britain’s African colonies. In his book Educating Young Nations, to which I referred in these columns some weeks ago, Mr Ward says: “The Cambridge conference of 1952 suggested no fewer than fourteen ways of attacking the problem. The most drastic, and probably in the long run the most effective, is that children who have attended school regularly should not repeat a class but should be automatically promoted at the end of the year. This implies that the class should no longer be regarded as an achievement group but as an age-group. If the school is efficient, the programme for each school year should be regarded as a programme which children of a certain age should normally be able to accomplish. Clearly, automatic promotion may solve the problem of wastage, but only by creating a new problem: that of the child who moves up the school without ever mastering the rudiments. But if the school is efficient, such children will be in a minority, and this is a price worth paying.”

The number of children who move up the school without ever mastering the rudiments will be reduced to a minimum if teachers of the first and second classes are encouraged — by their heads, by the Department, and by public opinion — to regard teaching these classes as important as teaching the scholarship classes. Indeed, I would suggest that the teachers of the first and second classes are more important than the teachers of the upper classes. For the teachers of standards V and VI could not do their work if the teachers of standards I and II had not first done theirs. Children come to school unable to read and write; the teachers in standards I and II have the satisfaction of seeing their pupils learning to read and to write — of seeing their pupils transformed into beings with the beginnings of the basic tools of modern civilization — reading and writing — at their fingertips. It is the hardest job in teaching, to teach beginners to read and write; the teachers of the lowest classes are doing the most important single job in education for their pupils.

But this was never properly communicated by Messrs Opper and Snell or their deputy. Mr Ward would have communicated it; he had the inestimable gift of ensuring that people understood what was being done in education and understood too why it was being done. And this second understanding is more important than the first. Mr Ward had been in Mauritius only a few months when he started persuading people how the then scholarship examination system was wrong; and he got it changed. Had he, and not Mr Snell, introduced the system of automatic promotion following the Cambridge conference’s recommendation, there would not now be the complaints that still exist that automatic promotion is not in the schools’ best interests.

What the Education Department has lacked for ten years is a man able to communicate to the public the reasons underlying changes in education policy. The present Minister is remedying that lack; the way is clear for Mr Beejadhur to improve still further relations between the Education Department and the public.

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Trade Union Elections

There is widespread interest in the recent elections in the Electrical Trades Union. Charges of ballot-rigging have been raised against the union leadership in respect of the recent election of a general secretary. The press, the radio, and the television have all alleged that the Communist leadership of the union has manipulated the election machinery to ensure that the Communist candidate for general secretary was re-elected. Unfortunately, the trade union movement has become, in the UK, the happy hunting ground for the worst kind of sectarianism. In the heat of charge and countercharge, the real basis of trade unionism has been in danger of being lost. Look at recent elections:

• Electrical Trades Union — election for secretary: the two candidates were Haxell (Communist) and Byrne (Roman Catholic).
• Amalgamated Engineering Union — election for president: the two candidates were Carron (Roman Catholic) and Birch (Communist).
• AEU — election of full-time official in Scotland: the two candidates were Sherriff (Communist) and Maley (Roman Catholic).

This state of affairs has prevailed in elections in other unions, notably the Foundry Workers. The final ballot is Roman Catholic versus Communist; people vote Communist to keep the Catholic out, or Catholic to keep the Communist out. Neither candidate is really voted into office on the strength of his industrial record. Nor is either faction, Catholic or Communist, really representative of British trade unionism. But by allowing the spotlight to be diverted to the struggle between these factions, the whole movement is being weakened.

7th Year – No 291
Friday 25th March, 1960

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 17 January 2025