Give Mauritius More Technical Education

Mauritius Times – 70 Years

By Peter Ibbotson

The development program outlined in the Sessional Paper accompanying the recent speech from the Throne, disrupted (but not abandoned) by the cumulative effects of cyclones Alix and Carol, indicates the country’s growing “plan-mindedness.” Development and progress require planning, ensuring various desirable advances don’t compete for scarce resources. This increased “plan-mindedness” stems from the rise of the Mauritius Labour Party, culminating in their 1959 general election victory, the first under universal adult suffrage. The Labour Party’s contribution to the country’s “plan-mindedness” mirrors the People’s National Party’s (PNP) influence in Jamaica. (The PNP, Jamaica’s Socialist Party, is affiliated with the Socialist International.) The PNP’s 1955 election victory led to the establishment of “a permanent and continuing planning outlook and machinery,” as George Cadbury (formerly United Nations Advisor on Economic Planning to the Government of Jamaica) noted in this month’s ‘Venture’ – organ of the Fabian Commonwealth Bureau. The same could be said of the Mauritius Labour Party.

The PNP planned, among other things, the country’s educational development. This is also being planned in Mauritius; the present Minister has at heart the true welfare of the nation’s children and the desire to secure the country’s future. Educational planning is crucial for the orderly development of educational facilities; in the past, there has been wasteful and often duplicated expenditure of educational effort, not always in the best interests of schools or the country.

In ‘Venture’, Mr Cadbury outlines the four cardinal principles underpinning the PNP’s educational plans. I quote them fully because they are general principles underlying educational plans in any underdeveloped territory, especially a dependent territory striving for self-government, and should be understood by the general public and responsible Ministers. Mr Beejadhur and his colleagues know what they want and how to achieve it; their ideas on educational progress for Mauritius command the utmost respect and applause.

Here are the four principles of educational planning: “Firstly, that education is a vital element in economic as well as social advance, no longer a wholly welfare expenditure but an investment in a country’s major resources, its human beings; secondly, education is the preparation for all types of eventual activity from the inculcation of the habits of regularity and conscientious work essential to high productivity in the lowest levels of the labour force, to the intellectual training of the scientist, managers or senior civil servants who must make the policy decisions; thirdly, education is the ladder up which ability can climb irrespective of wealth or parenthood and, fourthly, education at its minimum provides the ability to read and write which is an essential pre-requisite to a democratically organised community.”

The logical conclusion of these four principles – which underlie the program of educational progress in Mauritius envisioned by the present Minister and his colleagues – is free and compulsory primary and secondary education for all. But Mauritius (like Jamaica) lacks the necessary resources for such a reform, so the principles must be applied within available resources and the general framework of educational and social advance.

Jamaica’s first priority was five years of primary education for all. As I showed in a recent article, there is considerable wastage in the primary schools of many colonies; few who enrol in class I complete the full primary course. Compulsory primary education in Mauritius would have been introduced sooner, had it not been for the disastrous cyclones. Nonetheless, it remains the most important long-term educational reform planned by the present government.

Nearly as important is the plan for extra secondary education in comprehensive, or ‘all-purpose,’ secondary schools, starting at Beau-Bassin and extending to rural areas. These schools will provide technical and academic education; when these two complementary facets of secondary education are given equal importance in the same school, the status of the technical school pupil will rise, benefiting the community. In Mauritius, secondary education still means grammar school education, and higher education means university education.

Mauritius has 123 students at UK universities, but only 72 at UK technical colleges. Other dependent territories tell a different story. British Guiana: 115 at universities, 140 at technical colleges; Somaliland, 10 and 40; Cyprus, 169 and 416; Hong Kong 237 and 258; Nigeria, 879 and 1,311; North Borneo and Sarawak, 10 and 22; Sierra Leone, 112 and 138; Uganda, 158 and 297; Trinidad, 166 and 164. These colonies, aspiring to or having achieved self-government, realize it alone cannot achieve everything. Social and economic advance needs technicians and technologists; but too many Mauritians overlook this, assuming that becoming doctors, dentists, or lawyers assures their place in the new Mauritius. Given the current mindset of many Mauritians contemplating higher education in the UK, I add a fifth principle to Mr Cadbury’s four: “Technical education, at both school and college level, is essential to any society aspiring to major economic and social advance.”

Mr Beejadhur realizes this; do his critics? If not, it is high time they did. Greater provision of technical education is the biggest single step forward in secondary education in present-day Mauritius.

7th Year – No 294
Friday 15th April 1960

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 7 February 2025