Port Louis — While the minister of Education looks less stressed and more convinced that people will realise his reform is a positive contribution to education, lawyers from civil society and the opposition are getting ready to take action

Minister Gokhool met the members of the Private Secondary Schools Authority to discuss the coming reform

Despite the minister of education, Dharam Gokhool's appeals to let him do his work properly, the reactions against his reform concerning the admission in Form I are not abating. After trying to make him change his mind through speeches, many of the opponents to his reform are considering different means of taking further action.

After the announcement that the reform would be implemented this year, many lawyers gathered to see what they could do to oppose its application. Claiming to belong to none of the political parties, they are studying ways of getting it postponed or even cancelled.

At the political level too, things are warming up. The two main opposition parties are studying ways of suing the government. The Mauritian Militant Movement (MMM) has called upon its lawyers to see how it could take to court the issues of the new A+ grading and the introduction of national colleges into the system. After meeting parents, they do not want to "exclude any possibility and will take all the time necessary." After they have studied cases of parents who believe their children have been wronged, then "one or several complaints could be lodged".

However, they do not know yet what legal arguments will be the most forceful to support their theories. They could use the case of some parents who expected to see their children allocated a seat in one of the Form VI colleges - created by the former government under the Obeegadoo reform. With the counter-reform, their children will have much less chance of getting a place in a form VI of a national college.

The MMM could also use the legal advice of the State Law Office (SLO) a few days before the reform was implemented stating that an advance notice of at least one year is necessary before putting any reform into practice. By going ahead with its reform, the government has not followed the SLO advice and this could be illegal. However, nothing is definite yet.

Like the MMM, the Militant Socialist Movement (MSM) wants to take action. Not only is it "examining the legal implications" of the measures taken by the government but it is also going in the field to make the population aware of the "dangers" of the reform. After a series of meetings of party members on the education issue, the leader, Pravind Jugnauth, has not spared any effort to meet socio cultural associations and other organisations to make them aware of the issue.

The government still appears convinced that the reform is the best way of making the education system fairer but the minister of Education nevertheless seems to have changed his approach. After appearing offended and even furious that a section of the population - particularly the press - had castigated his reform, he seems to have changed his tune at the meeting with members of the Private Secondary Schools Authority (PSSA). This might be due to his feeling that "there has been a change in the attitudes of some people".

He admitted that "there may be a dose of competition" in the system proposed but insisted that this was nothing new since the Bureau of Catholic Education (BCE) uses the same system of admission. "If there were more seats, we could have given more chances to far more children". But the number of "places is restricted and we had to find a way of allocating them and we have decided to do it on the basis of merit".

The minister appeared far more relaxed as he said that international quality is a concept and a "concept is always criticised". He asked the population "not to condemn him before he has done his job".