The SACMEQ II Project in Mauritius: a study of the conditions of schooling and the quality of education: Mauritius working report

This report provides a description of the results of the SACMEQ II Project - SACMEQ’s second major educational policy research project. The first chapter sets the scene by describing briefly the structure of the Mauritius school system, trends in access and participation, how school administration and finance work, and the policy reforms in education. Chapter 2 introduces the educational policy research project of the Southern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ. It explains the initial planning, development of instrumentation, sampling methods, field work operations, the data entry and data cleaning, scoring of tests, and analysis and writing of reports. The following five chapters have been generated from five clusters of general policy concerns. Chapter 3 presents data on pupils’ characteristics and their learning environment. Chapter 4 presents data on teachers’ characteristics and their views on teaching, classroom resources, professional support and job satisfaction. School heads’ characteristics, their views on educational infrastructure, the organization and operation of schools, and problems with pupils and staff, are outlined in Chapter 5. Chapter 6 analyses the extent to which educational inputs (in terms of human and material resources) have been allocated in an equitable fashion among schools within regions. Chapter 7 examines the levels and variation in achievement of Standard 6 pupils in reading and mathematics, both for Mauritius and for all the other SACMEQ countries. Chapter 8 looks at the differences between those schools judged as effective, and those that are not. Each of the chapters 3 to 7 has a concluding section that offers a series of policy suggestions arising from the data and research results. Finally, in Chapter 9, an ‘agenda for action’ is presented. This summarises the policy suggestions, classifying them in terms of low, medium or high cost and indicates whether they involve short- or long-term action.