Port Louis — Raymond Rivet explains that the main reason why a national inspectorate has never been set up is the opposition of administrative inspectors. But it is more than ever a must.

Many teachers would be happy to be given advice on ways of improving their teaching methods, according to Raymond Rivet (inset).

"The idea of setting up an independent institute of pedagogy has always been the object of systematic opposition by inspectors," regrets Raymond Rivet. He who has struggled for the implementation of such an institution for more than 15 years does not intend to give up now. In his several reports to the ministry of Education, he has always insisted on the need to set up a pedagogical inspectorate to improve the level of teaching. The minister of Education, Dharam Gokhool, announced in Parliament that the whole concept of the inspectorate would be changed soon but Raymond Rivet insists that this institute should be totally independent.

In 1991, the then minister of Education, Armoogum Parsuramen, had already made it clear in his master plan for education. "There is thus a need for a fully professional unified inspection body, which will be competent to improve standards of learning and teaching as well as provide information and advice on the work of the schools." If Raymond Rivet agreed that an inspection body was necessary, he however showed his dissatisfaction with the fact that it would be under the aegis of the ministry of Education in Spiritus, the magazine of St Esprit College, of which he was the rector, in 1992.

For this educationist, the reason for setting up an inspectorate is obvious. As quality control exists in many economic sectors, it should be the case as well in education. "In the fifties, I remember that Dayendranath Burrenchobay and France Viader would come to sit at the back of the classroom to see how I was teaching and they gave me advice about how to improve my methods. They were not supposed to do it in private colleges like Saint-Esprit but they thought it was important," Raymond Rivet comments.

Today, such "controls" no longer exist in schools. Inspectors mainly focus on administrative, financial and infrastructure issues but they do not tackle pedagogical matters on a full-time basis. The aim is to keep the jobs of the administrative inspectors while setting up a whole new concept for pedagogical ones.

Bureaucratic administrative system

In his reports to the minister of Education in 1994 and 1995, Clive Hopes from the German Institute for International Pedagogical Research spelled out the conditions for an effective inspectorate: "The national inspectorate should be autonomous, system-oriented, the focus of attention should be on syllabus, curriculum development, didactics, testing and assessment."

The need for the institute to be autonomous is because of the bureaucratic administrative system of the ministry of Education. In fact, what he recommended was that the inspectorate, just as in the case of the Mauritius Institute of Education and the Mauritius Examinations Syndicate, be directly under the aegis of the minister of Education and not the ministry.

But Raymond Rivet went even further in a forum on Education in Mauritius - the way forward at the University of Mauritius in 2002. He gave the criteria a candidate should fulfil to be part of the institute. "The candidate should have a strong and outgoing personality, good communication skills, some authority but exercised with much diplomacy, a minimum of five years experience as a teacher in the corresponding sector".

Of course, he also suggested that the inspectors should be given training to make sure they meet the requirements of their new posts. "The candidate should also remain in his or her job for a minimum of twenty years. Hence, they should not be more than 35 years old when they are recruited," he added.

Such an inspectorate can only serve the education sector - and the country as a whole. "At the moment, even if they wish to, rectors can't really see whether their teachers are doing their jobs properly or not," says Raymond Rivet. The Mauritius Institute of Education is involved in training teachers as they start their careers but there is no follow-up.

Teachers also need to be assessed to make sure their teaching methods serve their pupils best. "Such institutions already exist in all developed countries and are becoming a must in Mauritius as well," says Raymond Rivet.