Education Review   |30 December 2022

Creole Festival at Ecole Francaise des Seychelles

Successful resuming of schools after the pandemic

Year 2022 has been a special year for many students. After almost two years studying remotely or partially at school, all students from crèches, primary, secondary and post-secondary institutions resumed school on January 24, 2022.

Minister for Education, Dr. Justin Valentin, noted that the education system has remained survivor of the Covid-19 pandemic, while it is the everyday duty of the educators to come up with new methods of teaching to absorb the maximum percentage of learners, thus maintaining progress throughout the process.

About 2022, Minister Valentin shared that he is “very satisfied at what we have achieved together. I visited many schools. This year has been very eventful and we managed to show our strength in a number of ways. Generally, we were excellent in all the activities that we held nationally such as our education day celebration in January, the assessment symposium, children’s day activities, the children’s participation in the National Day, the inter-school athletics championship, the various TV quiz contests, the Teachers’ Day activities, and the launch of the school-based Lospitalite clubs, just to name a few”.

During the year, refreshed the minister, several schools initiated many school based activities for both their children and parents through generous donors.

“We witnessed donations from parents, and from both local and international organisations. We saw our students doing very well in most of the activities organised for them. They did well in national and international examinations; students did exceptionally well in the recent science fair competition; and very well in the Global robotic challenge in Geneva.

In 2022, the Ministry of Education collaborated with other ministries and the students were able to participate in various activities where they excelled.

Minister Valentin commended all the head teachers who try their best to keep their schools welcoming and shared that the plan of the Ministry of Education is to move forward Education such as focusing on the technical subjects.

“As from next year, we will work on projects that will have an impact on the schools. We have a plan that we are following and we need the collaboration of the teachers and parents. We all know students lack activities and I highly encourage teachers to initiate projects that can be realised and make the students happy. It will be the same message that we will start 2023 with,” concluded Minister Valentin.

Free breakfast for primary and secondary and free lunch for primary only

In order to help the parents with the expenses, as of September 5 students from primary and secondary public schools started to receive free breakfast whereas free lunch will be for primary students only. This was well received by primary pupils but secondary students did not really come forward to get their breakfast.

Results

In 2021, for the primary six exams, a total of 1340 pupils enrolled to sit the six examinable subjects, namely, English, French, Creole, Mathematics, Science and Social Studies compared to 1385 in the previous year. However, on average 1324 actually sat those examinations.

However, it to be noted that this level of performance is consistent with performances in 2020, while students again performed better in Creole with an increase in grades A* to C from 50 percent in 2020 to 56 percent in 2021.

For the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE), the total number of S5 students enrolled for the examinations, in at least one subject, in 2021 was 611 compared to 703 in 2020.

The percentage of grades A* to C in IGCSE subjects in 2021 was 57 percent, an improvement compared to 2020 which was 55 percent.

As for the Diplôme d'études en langue française (Delf), in 2021, 62 students registered for B1 in S4 while there were 79 in 2020. Delf has kept with its tradition in 2021 in producing high pass rates across levels, despite the adverse impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on in-person teaching.

Altogether, for the full A-level, Sals had 156 examination entries and for AS level, the institution had 66 entries.

The pass rate for the A-level examination was at 98 percent with 58 percent scoring a grade C or better.

For AS level, Sals registered a pass rate of 97 percent with 59 percent scoring a grade C or better.

Other activities

Nine Seychellois teachers’ went to Alliance Française de Cavilam in Vichy in the Auvergne region of France for one month through the Alliance Française Seychelles and French embassy.

In November, the ministry also hosted its first Teacher’s Convention. The historical gathering, which brought together head teachers, teachers of both academic and non-academic subjects and representatives of the teachers’ forum from all public schools across the country, was in line with the ministry’s strategic plan to enhance the quality of education at all levels of the education system, in collaboration with the United Nations.

Almost all schools teamed up with a tourism establishment for the Lospitalite-Lafyerte Sesel clubs.

Another first was when the head teachers and their deputies came together in a working session to share their respective schools’ good practices in November. This event was the first step that the ministry took to ensure that schools no longer work in silos but instead find themselves motivated to share what is happening at their schools.

The schools celebrated various ‘International Days’. Some schools were introduced to Britannica Digital Learning UK platform. Many students were able to learn more about abuse and bullying through different campaigns in their schools. The Ministry for Education organised various activities such as: a symposium which addressed learning difficulties, equipped teachers to raise learners’ attainment; forum on ‘Open Educational Resources’ and ICT in education.

As usual Teachers’ Day and Children’s day were celebrated with various activities.

A group of retired educators formed a new association aimed at supporting the community in education matters - The Seychelles Association of Retired Education Professionals (Sarep), a volunteer non-profit organisation, was launched in August.

The Association Seychelloise des Enseignants de Français (ASEF) in collaboration with the Commission Nationale de la Francophonie (CNF) commemorated the International Day of French Teachers.

Private schools

All private schools were very busy this year and quite a few articles were published in our newspaper.

The International School Seychelles (ISS) also shared that it has recorded its best exam results for the last five years with a pass rate of 93% across the three different year groups of IGCSE, AS (first year at A-Level) and A-Level students taking their exam in June this year.

Among the 93% pass rate, between 46 and 49% were A* to B grades for A-Level and IGCSE and 33% of A* and A grades at AS.

Ecole Française des Seychelles had their carnival in March 2022 and various activities around the ‘Francophonie’. EFS also registered very good results for the year.

The Children’s House Montessori primary and pre-school paid tribute to past teachers, assistant teachers and current teachers in April.

Trotters Stop celebrated Easter with hat parade and craft exhibition and other festivals.

During the year, Independent School also shared the good results from 2021 exams.

All in all, this year was quite a busy year for the schools and the teachers adapting to new ways of operation.

Vidya Gappy