LALIT addressed a letter today to the Prime Minister calling on him to reprimand the Minister of Education and to withdraw his Blueprint
11.12.2025
LALIT addressed a letter today to the Prime Minister calling on him to reprimand the Minister of Education, to withdraw his Blueprint on Education and to come up with a White Paper instead.
Here is a copy of the letter.
Prime Minister Hon Dr Navin Ramgoolam,
Treasury Building,
Port Louis.
11 December 2025
Dear Sir,
We call on you to reprimand your Minister of Education for three actions:
1. Permitting the former colonizer France to interfere in the Republic of Mauritius’ decision-making process in the run-up to the issuing of a “Blueprint on Education”, a blueprint since withdrawn during the Cabinet meeting of 28 November. The French colonizer, represented by the Ambassador Mr. Frederic Bontems on Radio Plus on 19 November 2025 in the context of the President Macron State Visit:
“Et nous [France] avons travaillé avec le ministère de l’éducation nationale [of the Republic of Mauritius], dans la foulée de ce qui s'est passé cette année, qui sont les assises de l'éducation qui se sont tenues autour de la place des langues dans le système éducatif, notamment le français et le créole bien sûr.”
2. Stifling nation-wide debate, and doing this in flagrant violation of electoral promises to open up debate and discussion as part of a process of democratizing “Government”.
In this context, note that despite LALIT’s formal and public request in writing on 4 January to the Education Minister (see Attachment 1) that the question of the medium in schools be placed at the centre of debate during the Assises de l’éducation held in April, this proposal was simply rejected without any reason being given. As you know, over 90% of the people of the country usually speak Kreol at home, and UNESCO has for over half a century insisted upon the mother-tongue being medium in schools for proper cognitive development, and this is why we proposed debate on this central issue. Otherwise, harm is now known to be done by the imposition of a medium that is not the mother-tongue. That is why our letter to you is urgent: we are harming our children by imposing as medium one non-mother tongue, and now the Government seems to be proposing two non-mother tongues. It is totally anti-pedagogical and everyone knows this.
In fact, the subject of the medium in schools was simply totally excluded from the long list of subjects up for discussion at the Assises. When the mother-tongue was none-the-less brought up in two group discussions, and garnered consensus in both groups, and was placed on the list of 5 proposals to be presented at the plenary session, both civil servants acting as “rapporteurs” somehow applied censorship and cut the proposals from both group reports. [See Attachment (2) for our two protest letters giving testimony to this.]
So, there was no debate at all on the subject of the medium to be used in schools.
Then the French Ambassador announces that in the “foulée” of the Assises the subject of the medium of instruction was discussed. So your Government discussed the medium of instruction not with Mauritians, but with the ex-colonizers! And did so in secret. And it was only announced by the French Ambassador. We note that in this first announcement, it was to be “notamment le français et le créole bien sûr”. It turns out, bien sûr or not, that later all successive references were not to “French and Kreol”, but to “French and English”. Our guess was that some humble civil servant pointed out to our Minister that the use of “French and Kreol” for the teaching of subjects like Maths and Science would be either illegal or ultra vires, because we understand there is a Regulation under the Education Act that makes English the language of instruction, and it specifies that only for the first three years of school can the Minister over-write this ban.
But, whatever the reason, it became clear that there was a further marginalization of the national mother-tongue. Instead of adding Kreol, as medium alongside the colonial language English, we now learn from the French Ambassador and later from the French President, that a second colonial language, French, is being introduced without a single word of national debate. This is totally unacceptable.
And the process is already in action, in government-funded institutions, and private ones, too. Here is the cavalier statement of the Ambassador, in the “foulée” of the Assises where the subject of the medium was completely banned, then when brought up censored:
“Et nous sommes arrivés à une idée qui est de développer des filières d'excellence qui soient des filières bilingues dans lesquelles une partie de l'enseignement pourrait se faire en français. Alors, on le fait déjà dans quelques lycées pilotes lycées et collège pilote dans le secteur privé.”
3. Imposing without consensus a reversal of the doing away with the CPE in the Blueprint (now withdrawn), and re-introducing all the old competition for places in secondary schools for 11-year-olds. We thus support the SeDEC and Mr. Tengur who rightly express their reserve on this.
So, we call on you, in addition to reprimanding your Minister of Education, to withdraw his Blueprint (a Blueprint being a document imposed once all consultations are over), and to come up instead with a White Paper (which is the expression used for a discussion paper proposed by the Authorities) so that a proper nation-wide discussion can be opened up, instead of suppressed and closed down, and from which imperial powers are excluded.
We need a debate without censorship. Why not let everyone discuss the medium of instruction? It is the huge, big elephant in the room. It is the cause of almost all other problems – the rote learning resorted to by the “bright” students, failure of less quick children, violence amongst young people who suffer the ultimate violence of the suppression of their mother-tongue in schools, lack of critical thinking amongst pupils, lack of logical approach to questions, and so on – all points outlined in every report over the past decades and decades since Independence.
We deplore the fact that in the official report of the Cabinet meeting of 5 December, Mauritius is referred to alongside the French colony, Reunion, as “the two territories”. As you know, France calls its colonies “territories”, or more precisely “Territoires d’Outre-Mer”. The Republic of Mauritius is a sovereign country not a “territory” of someone else. Reunion, so far, still is.
We call on you, with a view to deepening democracy, to publish the “Accord de Cooperation Educative” that the Minister of Education signed with the Préfet (or Governor) of the French colony last week, so that we, the people of Mauritius, can see what is in it, and if necessary get the Government to rescind it. Please could you also publish the previous “accord” he signed with the French President Macron on education when he was here. As you are aware, France has a massive excess of unemployed “coopérants” (colonial civil servants) that it needs to give jobs to, since France has been kicked out of so many African countries in the past few years. They want a place to park them where they can lord over “the locals” as “advisors”. This kind of “advice” will not produce the kind of education that Mauritian children need nor deserve. We can do better than take this colonial pathway as a French “territory”.
After the Education Minister’s appeal in Parliament for debate on some of the issues, two of our members, the next day, 10 December, telephoned everyone we could possibly get hold of at the Education Ministry asking for guidelines on how to join the debate. No-one could enlighten us. Thus this letter to you.
Yours sincerely,
Alain Ah Vee and Cindy Clelie,
for LALIT
(1) Copy of our letter
(2) Copy of the letters by us two witnesses, Alain Ah Vee and Cindy Clelie.
[ATTACHMENT1]
[ATTACHMENT 2]
