Didier Wong, Artist, teacher of applied arts and academic trainer in France.
Passing through Mauritius for his second solo exhibition, (“Alalila” is on display at the Imaaya gallery until July 11), Didier Wong takes a critical look at the pitfalls of the art and design education system in the “Higher School Certificate” (HSC), a sector that is suffering.
For you, the “Art and Design” sector is “in great danger”. Why?
I am not here to criticize the work of teachers, far from it. But it is necessary to highlight inconsistencies in the changes made to the system. Art and Design is indeed in great danger. In state colleges, there are teachers with only one student who has chosen this subject at the main level in HSC.
How many cases do you personally know?
Four-five at state colleges. The teacher does one-to-one. In religious schools, I know of cases with classes of eight, ten, up to 15 students. Which is not a lot compared to when I was a schoolboy.
Is it a disenchantment with the sector, interest in the new subjects offered or the reduction in the student population?
There is a bit of all of that. But the syllabus changed before the pandemic. It became more demanding, requiring a greater investment. There are two projects and research to be done. For the projects, the student chooses the theme they want, but they must have the means to finance the acrylic, the good quality oil paint that are imported. For work on canvas, the first try is not the right one, there are experiments to be done. It is expensive. Parents wonder what opportunities there are apart from graphic design, interior design, architecture. And then there is the possibility of becoming an Art and Design teacher. What to do with the teacher who has only one student? The financial problem can be solved…
…Who will finance the equipment? The State?
The 2024-25 Budget has just announced free internet for 18-25 year olds. It’s positive. If the State is going to release so much money for young people, why couldn’t it release additional budgets for schools, allowing the purchase of supplies that would be made available to students?
This exists in France. The State and the Region provide funding. Each establishment has an envelope divided between the subjects. I have always fought so that parents of students buy basic supplies but that the others are provided by the establishment. In the arts and crafts sector, in visual communication, for example, students have a code giving them free access to expensive software such as Adobe In Design, Illustrator, etc.
Still in government gifts: at 18, the young person has an allowance of Rs 20,000. They do what they want with it. Why not decide that we need to spend Rs 5,000 of that Rs 20,000 on supplies, books, etc.? in HSC? This could make the sector Art and Design financially more accessible.
Are you also very concerned about the results in this subject?
They are catastrophic. In 2023, out of 400 students who took Art and Design as a hand, only three got an A. It’s amazing. (Editor’s note: Statistics from the Mauritius Examinations Syndicate indicate that in 2023, out of 400 students, none got an A+ in Art and Design. While 134 students got a D and 121 students got an E). Teachers I’ve spoken to say that those who got a B or a C are good students.
How do you explain this situation?
Probably because of the way the exams are marked by Cambridge. How can we not react to last year’s results? It seems that the MES has asked the teachers who complain to write a letter to Cambridge. But who is responsible? It is the MES. It is insane.
The results have been dropping for years. As someone who grades baccalaureate exams in France, I feel that teachers have not been trained enough on the Cambridge grading criteria. It would be necessary to re-explain what is expected of teachers and students. If the results are so bad, either there is something that the teachers have not understood in the grading scales, or the students have not understood the instructions. There should be more exchanges between locals and international examiners.
In the School Certificate (SC), the results are correct. The tests are corrected in Mauritius. (Editor’s note: The MES indicates that in 2023, out of 2,398 candidates in Art and Design, 99.17% obtained the pass rate). Let’s not forget what this situation says culturally about Mauritius. We are getting poorer.
Take theExtended Programme. The first year, in Grade 7, these students do not Art and Design. The subject only appears in Grade 8. The difficulty for middle school teachers is that they find themselves with students who do not have the level required to pass the final exam in primary school. Students who in Grade 7 do not necessarily know how to read and write. However, middle school teachers are not trained to teach in primary school. Nor do they want to do so.
It recognizes that there are also students who do not have the intellectual capacity to go as far as the SC. By keeping them in a system where they have to re-enter the mainstream, we are accentuating school dropouts. I wouldn’t say it’s a waste of time for students who are late learners. But the others lose four years. (Editor’s note: In 2023, the success rate for the National Certificate of Education for students in the Extended Program was 8.9%).
We have just learned that the evaluation system is going to change. Two or three years ago, I met the Minister of Education. It was a personal approach to talk about the French vocational baccalaureate, a model that could have benefited Mauritius. She listened and told me about the MITD.
In Mauritius, there are so many opportunities in the tourism sector and crafts, but this requires know-how. There is too much emphasis on intellectual achievement, modeled on Singapore’s competitive system. What do we do with students with serious family problems? We know that what happens at home has a direct impact on the education and behavior of students. I don’t understand why they call HSC Pro a program where you don’t learn a trade.
There is the company internship in the HSC Pro.
Students follow the same program as the HSC mainstream. The internships chosen by the MES are in the IT sector. The student has five subjects, plus the Cambridge Advanced Professional in IT (Capit), plus the internship. It seems heavier than the mainstream. We focus on IT. Why? Capit could have been an option in HSC mainstream.
Last year, the HSC Pro saw different colleges and student profiles emerge as winners.
Are we creating a system to produce winners? I find this discriminatory. Scholarships are for the best, what about the others? Mauritius is too focused on this competitive dimension. We lack kindness, humanity. Education is not just for a privileged minority.
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Didier Wong is Mauritian, naturalized French. He is a doctor of Arts and Art Sciences. He has been teaching applied arts in a vocational high school in the Créteil academy for 17 years. For three years, he has also been an academic trainer, meaning he contributes to teacher training. Didier Wong is also commissioned for advice visits to teachers. A former student of the Collège du Saint-Esprit, after the HSC, he taught there for six months to students from Forms I to IV.
