Om Nath Varma, director of the Mauritius Institute of Education (MIE), is not against an international evaluation system like PISA, but he says that there is “a more pressing need to put the process right which should take care of the end”.

What do you think of the “National Form III Assessment” which “donne des informations contradictoires, notamment sur le niveau en langue”, as the Chief Editor Raj Meetarbhan has rightly pointed out in “Un challenge pour Maurice” (l’express of the 1st June 2016)? 
I am not going to comment on the current Form III examinations. Yet, I can tell you that my institution is doing a very thorough work, consulting a diversity of stakeholders, especially educators. And it will come with an entirely new National Curriculum Framework where the teaching of languages will be given prime importance. Remember we are in a reform process and that we are looking at education as a cycle of 9 years. 

Isn’t there a need for Mauritius to adopt the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the international system of evaluation of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, as I have written since 2013 in this “Education” page of l’express?
I do not think that we have a problem with an international evaluation system. However, you should be aware that there is a more pressing need to put the process right which should take care of the result. If you read ‘Finnish Lessons’ by Pasi Sahlberg you will see that the basis for a good Finnish education was laid as far back as 1966 and it took 40 years to reach what it has.

How is the implementation of the 9-Year Schooling reform by the MIE going on? What has been accomplished since the press conference of the Minister?
We have developed the National Curriculum Framework based on the policy of the government and the vision of the Hon Minister for the 9-year schooling. We are also doing a complete thorough job in developing textbooks for all grades. So far we have completed Grades 1, 2, 3, and 5. If I am not mistaken, there are 174 books already available for schools.

We are also responsible for training, which has started. Soon, we are going to ensure that our training plan is implemented. This will engage all teachers through a community of practice and will provide continuous support. We are also working very closely with the Mauritius Examinations Syndicate. If you have had a look at the Primary SAC document gazette, it would have been clear that the syllabus developed by the MIE, based on the NCF G1-6, is the fundamental document specifying what should be taught and assessed at the PSAC. We are also providing special materials for children with disabilities.

What are the relations between the MIE and the Ministry? Are you a simple performer of decisions taken elsewhere?
MIE is the only institution where there is a sufficient expertise in curriculum development, textbook writing, evaluation, besides training. Our strategic plan clearly states that we should be acting as the main consultative body for the Ministry on curriculum and training. We have been working together with the Ministry for every step.

Give me some examples to prove that the ideas of your Staff have gone the other way round, from the MIE to the Minister and her advisers?
You should be aware that the NCF for Nine-Year Continuous education (2015) and National Curriculum Framework Grades 1 to 6 (2015) are 100% MIE documents. You should know that such documents are not written in a few weeks or months on demand. MIE as an institution works in complete independence and looks at national needs.

Obviously, we align our documents with those of the government, while taking into consideration international trends. We also ensure a proper comparison with what is going on in the developed world, the place where we want our children to be at the end of secondary schooling.

What is the annual budget of the MIE? What is the ratio teachers / students (full-time & part-time)?
The budget of MIE varies. It is in the range of Rs 225 million to Rs 275 million yearly. We are probably the most cost-effective institution in the tertiary education today. Our students’ body varies from about 3,500 to 4,500 depending on yearly intakes. However, as you know our job is not limited to teacher education.

How many weekly working hours (courses & others) are carried out by MIE teaching staff?
We are an institution that has full time curriculum development activities. All our courses have a component of professional practice so that almost all our academic staffs have to engage in School Based supervision of teaching practice all over Mauritius.

On top of that all academic staffs have to be involved in at least 15 hours of teaching which is the highest in the tertiary education here. Many of them have to put in more hours as some of the expertise are scarce. I told you about the number of books written and that takes enormous time. We cannot complete all these tasks if we stick to a nine to four job.

As you probably know, no Mauritian institute of higher learning is among the 800 best universities of the “Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2016” (l’express of the 31st March 2016). The MIE is still not a university – despite your interview here in December 2013 ! – but research is one of the five performance indicators in the rankings. What research is carried out at the MIE and what is its influence at the national level?
We are engaged in a number of research work directly linked with teaching, pedagogy. This is an essential need for every tertiary institution. We have had a special Research Unit for about four years now headed by a professor and we are now placing a lot of emphasis on research. Research needs financial resources, and all researchers are faced with financial constraints. We have lately developed a number of research projects and are now getting the support of the Mauritius Research Council.

How many articles have been published by your researchers in foreign “Peer-reviewed journals”?
As for the number of articles published in journals, I will not be able to tell you exactly now, but we do have high calibre academic staffs publishing in Peer-reviewed journals. Many have realized that there is no benefit in short cuts. We have a system of allocating marks to research and we allocate very little marks to publications in nonrefereed journals.

Let us talk about Library, an emblematic place in any university or institute of Education. Is the MIE library fully digitalized?
We are relying on digital resources. We are subscribed to international journals and also get access to resources of our partner Universities. Our library is one of the best for education, which is obvious. But we are still lacking in resources that are desired for an institution like MIE.

It is all a matter of financial resources. We have a project for making all our resources accessible online for our students in 2017.

Are the dissertation papers prepared and presented at the MIE well-preserved and classified?
Yes, we have all the best publications available in our library. We are also working on making digital versions of all of them. It will all be available in 2017. Obviously this is not a simple thing as we need rights and permission.

What about e-books in the library?
We have subscriptions to about 60 Journals and our students have access to them. As I said, we need more resources for more. Tertiary Education Commission has a programme for international journals that we also have access to and provide to our students. The latest innovation is the provision of all our publications online. All the books published by MIE are available.

How do things stand concerning the introduction of Mauritian Kreol in schools?
We have developed the National Curriculum Framework for Kreol Morisien. We have completed textbooks for Grades 1 to 5. Grade 6 will be there for 2017. We have trained almost 200 educators to teach Mauritian Kreol. We are planning to get textbooks for it and we are also developing the NCF for Grades 7 to 9 for Mauritian Kreol.

Do you plan an external and objective evaluation of your pedagogical action (programme, text books, class lessons, etc.) by linguists and pedagogues?
As for the teaching at MIE we already have a very elaborate plan for internal Quality Assurance, a mock Internal QA process at the MIE with the inclusion of all Academic staffs. We have instituted a mechanism of self-evaluation, to be followed by extended evaluation internally and by external evaluation so as to strengthen our teaching by end 2017.