Beyond Pass/Fail: Rethinking Education in a Diverse World

The Education Debate

By Paramanund Soobarah

Bearing in mind the generally disastrous performance of the Lakwizin government, we may have to scrutinize things closely to determine if there’s any good worth salvaging. The MES School Certificate results for 2024 are now out and let us grab our microscope once again to pore over the statistics.

The very word “statistics” immediately brings to mind the image of a bell-shaped curve. This curve is an unflagging descriptor of measurable features of members of groupsin the natural world. Such groups (usually referred to as “populations” in statistical parlance) can consist of human beings, animal species, insects or whatever. It is usual for us to put a vertical line (i.e. a divider line”) vertically down this curve and call one side “right” and the other “left”, or one side “good” and the other side “bad”, or again one side “pass” and the other side “fail”.

If it so pleases you, you can have several vertical lines on the face of the bell, and so divide your population into “grades”, but for the time being we will stick to the case where there is only one vertical line, the divider line.If you are free to position this line wherever you want, then you can arrange things for yourself and minimise the “fail” portion. But even in that situation, you are stuck with a minimised “fail” portion. If the position of the divider line is already fixed by some authority above you, you’re stuck with the picture. In situations where the divider line is an inescapable infliction, fighting for zero failure is an impossible task and even a fight against nature.

One way out of this dilemma – trying to get an answer which is logically impossible – is to eliminate the dividing line completely and accept things as they are. Don’t carry out exams, or carry out exams and not mark the answers, or mark the answers and keep the results confidential, or issue certificates of attendance showing the marks obtained, or just issue certificates of attendance. Take your pick as per your needs. But for God’s sake for large populations don’t try to fool the uninitiated into believing that it is possible to have a dividing line and nothing to the left of it. In certain circumstances aiming for zero failure may even be a laudable objective, if it is accompanied by efforts to minimise the failure portion at affordable costs. If you engage in prohibitive costs, other objectives will necessarily suffer. By all means aim for zero failure, exercise yourself toward that end, but don’t expect it – unless you can eliminate the dividing line.

One question is not often asked.Is an illiterate person necessarily an uneducated person? Emperor Akbar of India was illiterate (he was born in the desert where his royal parents had been driven to from Delhi by other forces fighting for the throne, and he had a difficult childhood before his father regained the throne by way of Persia and Afghanistan.) But by no stretch of the imagination could he be called an uneducated person. Others can point to persons who are fully literate and numerate but can hardly be called “educated”. The whole concept of “education” and “pass/fail” needs to be re-examined for society at large. But where literacy and numeracy are essential skills for performance on the job, a way must be found for sorting the skilled from the unskilled. But there is no reason for calling anybody uneducated.

One current topic in the field of education is the number of credits required for admission to the HSC exam and hopefully to higher education subsequently. As far as I am aware, no thought is being given to the quality of the credits (they can be anything from 1 to 6, some would even include 7 and 8 there), nor to the performance, however bad, in other subjects, nor even to the subjects themselves. Some subjects are very good for cultural reasons but of no use at all where employment skills are concerned. It is a good thing to base decisions on facts, even though in the real-world decisions are often taken to please vote banks. A substantial amount of data concerning the three credits issue is available. If I remember rightly, it was Minister V. Bunwaree to take the decision in that regard before the advent of the MSM government. A study can readily be carried out to find out how productive that decision was. What percentage of 3-creditwallas did make it through at the subsequent HSC exam, and what was the quality of those passes? An examination of this data will permit a reasoned decision in this matter.

But let us turn our microscope to the SC results of 2024 and look at the numbers of those who have scored a Credit 4 or better in English, French and Mathematics, and compare them to analogous figures of 2012. We regard 2012 as a reliable base year, coming as it does before the advent of some outrageous changes in our national educational policies. See the table. The decline in French Language continues apace: compared to 2012, the figure has slipped downward from −38.29% in the previous year to -42.77% in 2024. In Mathematics also it is the same story, but perhaps not as bad: the slippage is from −14.39% in 2023 to −15.89% in 2024.Now for the good news: the performance comparison figure in English Language has actually jumped from −7.16% in 2023 to +4.37% in 2024.Compared to the year 2012, there has been a marked improvement in the teaching of English, and this is a matter for celebration.

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 24 January 2025