Oxford Review of Education

Vol. 32, No. 5, November 2006, pp. 679696

Comparing the trajectories of

educational change and policy transfer
in developing countries
David Johnson*
University of Oxford, UK
Oxford
10.1080/03054980600976411
CORE_A_197542.sgm
0305-4985
Original
Taylor
502006
32
David.Johnson@edstud.ox.ac.uk
DavidJohnson
00000November
and
&Review
Article
Francis
(print)/1465-3915
Francis
of 2006
Education
Ltd (online)

The article compares the educational policy trajectories of four societies in the South-west Indian
Ocean: Madagascar, Mauritius, Ile de la Runion and South Africa. The main purpose is to trace
the political pathways and differing educational policy trajectories of former colonies of Britain and
France. Five metaphors are invoked in this paper to describe the political and economic forces that
shape the educational policy trajectories of developing countries. Together they form a conceptual
model which provides the basis for comparative analysis of the post-colonial educational policy
choices between countries and allows for a more detailed examination of one or a cluster of polices.
The methods employed in the research reported here draw on the discipline of comparative history
and the resultant trajectories seem to offer a good heuristic device for generating, recording, and
graphically illustrating data.

Introduction
This paper offers a model for the comparative analysis of educational borrowing and
policy transfer in developing countries. It builds upon the continuum of educational
transfer proposed by Phillips and Ochs, (2004a, b) and argues that although most
developing countries have shared similar political-historical experiences, for example
during the colonial period, their trajectories in respect of educational policy and their
tendencies towards borrowing have developed in different directions. There is
nothing surprising about this, and it is to be expected, given that each country has its
own cultural-historical specificities. What is, however, potentially interesting is the
marked differences between the trajectories of the former colonies of France and
those of Britain, suggesting perhaps that the policy choices of these counties mirror,
long after independence, those of the former colonial powers. As interesting are the

*University of Oxford, Department of Educational Studies, 15 Norham Gardens, Oxford OX2

6PY, UK. Email: David.Johnson@edstud.ox.ac.uk

ISSN 0305-4985 (print)/ISSN 1465-3915 (online)/06/05067918

Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/03054980600976411
680 D. Johnson

noticeable within-group differences between former British colonies and those of

French speaking countries, although the latter are often less pronouncedsome of
this explained by the fact that some countries are overseas dpartements, such as Ile
de la Runion, Martinique and Guadeloupe. Nevertheless, the continued relationship
between their respective former colonies and France and Britain has produced varied
and interesting examples of educational transfer and has resulted in a similarly varied
set of educational policy trajectories. Put another way, the historical, political and
economic circumstances of one country (or more than one country), in relation to
another, have produced variants in the nature and shape of educational policy
choices. These trajectories and their historical, political and economic determinants
are the subject of this paper.
The paper compares the language-in-education policy trajectories of four societies
in the South-west Indian Ocean: Madagascar, a former French colony; Mauritius,
first colonised by Holland, later France and then Britain; Ile de la Runion, a French
Overseas Dpartement; and South Africa, a former British colony, and later internally
occupied. The main purpose is this: to trace in general terms, how far the foreign
example travels in developing countries and the nature of its course. Indeed, to
understand these policy pathways or trajectories and why they differ between
countries, requires an understanding of complex political relations and rapidly chang-
ing global economic architectures. The paper is concerned, therefore, with an under-
standing not only of historical relations between former colonies and colonial powers
but also of the effects of globalisation and the knowledge economy on educational
policy choices.
Five metaphors are invoked in this paper to describe the political and economic
forces that shape the educational policy trajectories of developing countries. They are:
telling, rebelling, compelling, selling and gelling. In broad terms, these metaphors
bear reference to the descriptors used by Phillips in his model of educational transfer,
i.e., imposed (telling), or negotiated under constraint (compelling), but extend this
model to include selling as a metaphor to describe globalisation and international
educational markets and gelling, to describe a coming together of indigenous and
foreign sources of knowledge and the emergent concept of the knowledge economy.
While some elements of these relationships are present in most developing coun-
tries, how they are played out constrains the shaping of educational policy in different
ways. So, for example, whilst most less-developed countries are bounded in some way
to international monetary agreements, some of the more heavily indebted poorer
countries are perhaps more vulnerable to compulsory policy reforms as part of the
conditions for aid. Developing countries with stronger economies, and indeed those
where internal community structures with heightened political consciousness partic-
ipate in the educational policy terrain, have tended to develop different kinds of
relationships with powerful donor organisations, as in the cases of South Africa and
Namibia.
Whilst the model described here provides the basis for a comparative study of
post-colonial educational policy choices, it also allows for a more detailed examina-
tion of one or a cluster of polices, imposed or voluntarily adopted in any one specific
 Educational change in developing countries 681

country study. Here, the origins of the foreign example, the process by which it is
introduced, the political contestations and tensions it produces in any one country,
the resistance or favour it courts, the actors, institutions and processes involved in its
adaptation, indigenisation and transformation need more careful scrutiny. There is
already some very good work on this in only a few developing countries (see Jansen,
2004; Spreen, 2004, both on South Africa). This paper does not seek to elaborate the
particularities of policy choices in any one country but makes broad reference to
similarities and differences in the adoption of language in education policy pathways.
Its main purpose is to argue the salience of the metaphors and proposes the following
as the most important reasons for so doing.
First, there is limited work in developing countries that documents and analyses
major policy shifts and the current or historical determinants that underpin them.
This leaves many of these countries with limited institutional memory, hampering
their capabilities to make informed policy decisions and leaving them vulnerable to
uninformed policy borrowing. The metaphors proposed by this paper are intended
as a heuristic device that provides for the development of a historical-political
comparative framework of reference wherein which the educational policy trajectories
of individual countries can be understood.
Second, there is an absence of clear reference points for comparing the different
and varied trajectories of one country to another. To provide one example here: the
policy response to the continued use of a language of instruction associated with the
colonial period brought many different responses in different developing countries.
These ranged from rejection in favour of a language aimed at achieving national unity,
e.g. in Tanzania, Madagascar and Malaysia, to adaptation (bilingualism or multilin-
gualism as is the case in Mauritius), continuation (Ile de la Runion) and interestingly,
reversion, as is the case in Malaysia and Madagascar, but with some caveats. These
choices appear at different historical junctures for each country and an important
consideration is the broader social, cultural, economic and political impulses that
drive these decisions. Whatever the case, the paper argues that there is a need for a
conceptual framework that draws upon both comparative history (Skocpol & Somers,
1980; Mahoney & Rueschemeyer, 2003) and comparative politics (Lichbach &
Zuckerman, 2002) to aid our understanding of the origin and use of the foreign
example in developing countries.

Comparative history as a method of enquiry

Comparative history, which broadly involves looking at historical trajectories as a
means to study social change (Skocpol & Somers, 1980), is a long-standing and very
attractive method of enquiry in the Social Sciences. Whilst looking at the historical
trajectories of any one country is without doubt an almost indispensable tool for
understanding social change, the benefit of comparative history, or a juxtaposition of
the historical trajectories of two or more countries, lies in its ability to shed light on
such macro-social topics or phenomena as political development, economic modern-
isation, or revolution (Skocpol & Somers, 1980). There are different techniques for
682 D. Johnson

doing this, including the use of comparative history as macro-causal analysis (which
resembles multivariate-hypothesis testing and aims at making causal inferences about
macro-level structures and processes), comparative history as the parallel demonstra-
tion of theory (which involves the juxtaposition of case histories and a finding of
similarities in order to illustrate that a given theory has common applicability and is
thus valid) and comparative history as the contrast of context (which, unlike the parallel
method above, seeks to bring out the unique features of each individual case) (see
Skocpol & Somers, 1980).
Scholars in comparative government or comparative politics draw substantially
upon comparative history, especially two basic analytic designs: the method of agree-
ment (working out the critical similarity by statistically reducing variables of overall
differences) and the method of difference (working out the crucial difference by
looking at positive and negative cases) (Mill, 1970).
The present paper builds upon the comparative history method and seeks to study
the phenomena of educational borrowing and transfer in selected developing coun-
tries by juxtaposing their historical and political trajectories. Given limitations of
space, the article opts for a broad summary of the major educational policy shifts in
each of the cases discussed. A more detailed contrast of cases approach as well as a
more elaborated parallel comparative analysis will be adopted in a forthcoming book
by Johnson, Hawkins and Feral. The data offered here are from a comparative study
of language, culture and education in four societies in the South West Indian Ocean.
The original data set has been supplemented by interviews with senior educational
personnel from Mauritius, Madagascar, South Africa and Runion, conducted in
March 2006. In each case, the conceptual model made up of the metaphors of telling,
rebelling, compelling, selling and gelling was presented to the interviewee. The
ensuing discussion took the form of an oral history or narrative enquiry.
Apart from testing the validity of the conceptual model for profiling the educational
trajectories of developing countries, the purpose of the study was to shed light on the
concept of the foreign example and conditions underlying how policy choices are
made by developing countries. It is therefore crucial to review current available
theories of educational borrowing and transfer. The continuum of educational trans-
fer suggested by Phillips and Ochs (2004a) provides a good starting point. There it is
argued that borrowing is best understood as taking place within a continuum of
educational transfer. At the one end of the continuum there is imposed educational
transfer which might conceivably emerge from totalitarian or authoritarian rule
(Phillps & Ochs, 2004b), whilst at the other, a voluntary adoption of the foreign
example brought about through the influence of ideas and methods from elsewhere.
Imposed educational transfer has variously been described as lending, the best
examples of which, according to Phillips and Ochs (2004a) occurred in the colonial
period. Education systems in many British colonies were modelled upon the school-
ing system in Britain and were geared to serving the needs of the home country.
Moving along the continuum, foreign examples and practices might be required
under constraint as is the case in occupied countries, or negotiated under constraint
as when required by bilateral or multilateral agreements, or copied intentionally
 Educational change in developing countries 683

(purposefully borrowed) from practices and examples observed elsewhere. The

spread of educational ideas and the voluntary adoption of these into education
systems constitute the other end of the continuum and contrasts lending to borrow-
ing. The continuum of educational transfer offers a useful framework for describing
either a historical period in educational change in particular countries, i.e. colonialism
or internal occupation, or a description of the policy formulation process, and
provides an ideal basis upon which to build a conceptual framework that allows for a
mapping of historical and contemporary educational trajectories.
Given the above, what framework of reference might one use to describe political
relations, both prevailing and historical, that have shaped the educational policy
trajectories of countries of the developing world? The five metaphors offered here are:
the politics of telling which many attribute to the period of colonialism but may well
denote existing contemporary political relationships between one country (or a group
of countries) and another; the politics of rebelling, often seen as describing post-
colonial relationships. Even here, there are many variants including complete rejec-
tion (apart from Tanzania with its programme of African Socialism and Madagascar
with the forming of the second Republic, this has rarely been the case) to milder forms
of policy review and renewal in which some parts of the colonial system are retained
(a classic example is the examination system); the politics of compelling, which
describes the relationships between the more heavily indebted poor countries
(HIPCs) and the international donor community. Although economically poor devel-
oping countries are invited to take the lead in policy development and the shaping of
the educational policy agendaa voluntarism to use Phillips and Ochs (2004a)in
reality, the policy environment is often dominated by donor-led examples of what
might work based on experience elsewhere. Many would describe this relationship as
neo-colonial. At the same time, there are many other developing countries (middle
income) which have more control over their policy environments and which are in the
market for educational policies that are said to translate into economic growth and
global competitiveness. These countries enter into an education market in which
policies are literally bought and sold. This set of relationships is described in this
paper as the politics of selling.
There is an interesting dialect between the politics of compelling and the politics of
selling, where in the case of the former, the donor community through its agents
(foreign or internal experts or consultants) acts as brokersthey select and buy
policies on behalf of the poor countries.
But it would be nave to think that the politics of compelling and selling denote
simplistic relationships. Both are, for example, bounded with the discourses of
nationalism, but not a narrow nationalism or even one that arises from a single
source. Strangely, even in a relationship such as compelling, the language of owner-
ship, power and accountability is often ventriloquised thorough donors. Terms
such as country-led partnerships, some would argue, demonstrate that powerful
donors like the World Bank have become wary of criticism that they dominate the
policy environment of poor countries, and are supportive of a process in which devel-
oping countries can determine their own educational futures. As economies and
684 D. Johnson

Figure 1. Trajectories of educational change and policy transfer

associated development needs diversify and become increasingly more complex, the
politics of selling intersects with the politics of gelling. A wider set of interest groups
take a renewed interest in education and set new agendas for it, constraining policy
to fit the new vision. In many cases this vision is for the creation or strengthening of
the new economy of knowledge. Knowledge has become a marketable commodity
and what it is, how it is shaped and applied, have become the ambit not of education
alone, but of a triple helix of government, industry and educational institutions. This
is a politics of crystallisation, or the coming together of the global and the local. It is
referred to in this paper as the politics of gelling and is inextricably bound with the
politics of compelling and selling. Using these metaphors as a broad description of
current and historical international relations, a conceptual model is derived (see
Figure 1). Although the model provides for a certain sense of stages and a chronol-
ogy, for example from colonialism to post colonialism to neo-colonialism to market
economy, not every country will go through the same political stage (as will be shown
in the case of Mauritius and Runion) or follow a particular time-line (South Africa
has moved rapidly in ten years between different stages of this model while for Mada-
gascar, policy shifts occurred more slowly). Neither are the pathways of policy
change linear, as the case of Madagascar, discussed later, will show.
Figure 1. Trajectories of Educational Change and Policy Transfer

The political context of four national education systems

South Africa, Madagascar, Mauritius and Runion all offer contrasting political
structures and histories that govern their education systems. Each country will be
discussed in turn in some detail, but it is worth pointing out some of the broader
comparisons by way of a general introduction. The four states divide naturally into
two pairs which reflect the continuing influence of their former colonial rulers, Great
Britain and France. The education systems of South Africa and Mauritius, both
former British colonies and members of the Commonwealth, still reflect the histori-
cally more decentralised approach of the British education system. The education
 Educational change in developing countries 685

systems of Madagascar and Runion, on the other hand, are marked by the influence
of the more centralised French system, where the administrative civil service takes a
more prominent role in running the education system. Indeed, the status of Runion
Island is that of an overseas Department of the French Republic, and as such is
regarded as an integral part of the French nation. Madagascar, a former French
colony, has come under direct French influence again in the last ten years, after a
period of relative economic isolation during the period of socialist government from
1975 to 1991.
A further broad comparison can be drawn in terms of the scale and the economic
status of the four states. South Africa is a major industrial and agricultural nation of
some 41 million inhabitants, amongst whom there are wide disparities of wealth and
standard of living; Mauritius and Runion have only 1.1 million and 700,000 inhab-
itants respectively, who enjoy for the most part lifestyles of high-income countries.
Madagascar, on the other hand, has a struggling economy with a population of some
14 million. Inevitably these considerable disparities will be reflected in the level of
educational provision of each country, but also in its policy priorities.

Comparing the educational trajectories of societies in the South

West Indian Ocean
While the conceptual model described here can be applied to the full spectrum of
educational policy choices, this article looks specifically at examples of language in
education policy.

Madagascar
Formal education began with the introduction of Christianity by British missionaries
of the London Missionary Society in the 1820s. The first teaching materials were
hand-written by the missionaries in the Malagasy language. This became the
language of instruction in the early years of schooling. From the 1860s onwards,
French Catholic missionaries opened a certain number of schools across the country
followed later by Norwegian and American schools. In all of these, Malagasy was the
teaching language, with some regional variations of dialect, and French was only
introduced in the higher levels of the Catholic mission schools.
The first major policy shift came at the end of the 19th century, with the military
colonisation of the island by France. For the first time public and secular primary
schools were established, subsidised by the state. In 1897, the then French Governor-
General of Madagascar, Gallini, closed down all schools in which French was not
the teaching language. Interestingly, the impulse (Phillips and Ochs, 2004a) for this
was political, not educational, and seen to be in the best interests of the French: Brit-
ish missionaries were suspected of sympathy for the national lite who were for the
most part the products of their schooling, and amongst whom were several figures
who had studied in British higher education. This lite, ousted from power after the
defeat of the armies of Queen Ranavalona III, was suspected of trying to organise
686 D. Johnson

resistance to the colonisation, with the help of the British, the eternal rivals of French
expansionism.
State education developed very quickly from the beginning of the 20th century,
following the doctrine that the colony could only become self-sufficient if the settlers
could count on a reasonably effective workforce, which only education could ensure.
Educational provision is thus shaped by the politics of telling. French remained the
teaching language throughout the colonial period (18961960).
Madagascar achieved independence in 1960 and French remained the language of
education during the First Republic (19601972). In this first decade after indepen-
dence, however, the study of the Malagasy language was progressively introduced as
an optional subject in secondary schools. Thus, in the initial post colonial phase,
educational policy changes were largely intended to meet the demand for expanding
the education system.
The period of rebelling began in 1972 when a nationalist movement emerged
from the student community, demanding the end of neo-colonialism, and led to the
fall of the regime and the creation of a transitional government that introduced
the malgachisation of teaching (see Figure 2). The movement continued with the
support of the socialist revolution in Madagascar which brought in the Second
Republic in 1975. This governments ambition was the malgachisation not only of
the education system, but the whole of the economic and social infrastructure, to put
an end to economic marginalisation and neo-colonial dependency. The universalisa-
tion of primary education and literacy was one of it central aims. But the regime,
economically weakened by the failure of its nationalisation programmes and the
abolition of per capita taxation, lacked the resources to implement its cultural and
educational policy: the 11,000 fokontany (units of local administration) were encour-
aged to build schools, but the state had neither the resources to pay for teachers
(particularly in rural areas, where the pupils parents were obliged to pool their
resources to pay the teachers salary) nor to provide basic teaching equipment
(furniture, textbooks, etc.). Madagascar had entered a period of economic decline
and this instigated the conditions for donor involvement in the educational policy
arena.
The Malagasy education system underwent yet another upheaval after the 1991
Figure 2. Educational Policy Trajectory of Madagascar

uprising, which demanded more democratic accountability in the political regime and
marked a period of reversal in educational policy choices. Political pressure brought
about the defeat of President Ratsiraka, the initiator of the Malagasy socialist revolu-
tion, in the elections of 1992, and the installation of the Third Republic, which
reversed most of the policies of the previous government. Thus it was that French,
considered as a guarantee of the quality of education, was decreed to be the teaching
language at all levels of the education system. However, the minimum technical
conditions needed for the implementation of this political decision were scarcely in
place: there were hardly any teachers capable of conducting their teaching in French
(those who could during the period of the First Republic had by now retired), nor
were there any textbooks in French to assist the teachers. In this context, the last ten
years have seen the rapid growth of private sector schools claiming to be French-
 Educational change in developing countries 687

speaking in order to justify high levels of fees, even though those officially recognised
by the French education authorities are few in number.
After the presidential election of 2001 and the severe political crisis which followed,
lasting for the first half of 2002, a new government is now in place, led by Marc
Ravalanomanana. In an interesting departure from the traditional FrenchMalagasy
language policy debate, the new government encouraged, in addition, the introduction
of English teaching in primary schools.
Madagascar has most recently become one of the first countries to have successfully
negotiated loans totalling $60 million under the Fast Track initiative. In seeking to
rebuild its poor schooling system, Madagascar has taken to policy borrowing. First,
in the attempt to extend primary education from five years to seven years it has been
attracted to policy models of both Singapore and South Africa. Second, it has sought
to improve its approach to teaching and learning and in the last two years it has intro-
duced a competency-based model, particularly in language teaching, concentrating
on writing, listening and speaking, and in this it has been attracted to the example of
Belgium. Its main priority is to strengthen the national system of education and build
its quality. Enrolments are good but not matched by outcomes. Madagascar has put
in place some innovative policy options for developing its national resource base.
Looking towards other models for involving parents in education, such as those in
Senegal and the Ivory Coast, satchels of materials such as books, pens, crayons, etc.
are provided to all children of primary school age and in its competition locale
parents and communities are asked to create projects to help raise quality. The
trajectory of educational policy in Madagascar is shown in Figure 2.
In summary, imposed policies or the politics of telling dominated the educa-
tional landscape in Madagascar from 1820 until 1960. In the period of the First
Republic (19601972) there was a progressive adaptation of educational policies,
many aimed at expanding the education system and the shaping of a new language
policy which saw the introduction of the Malagasy language as an optional language
to be studied in the primary school. The politics of rebelling and radical policy change
started in 1972, and by 1975 the balance of power had shifted drastically and
Madagascar aligned itself with the political forces of Marxism. This led to the rejec-
tion of the then dominant policies in education, mainly those concerned with the

Figure 2. Educational policy trajectory of Madagascar

688 D. Johnson

language of teaching and learning in favour of the malgachisation of the education

system as well as the economic and social infrastructure. Underlying this was a radical
shift in the ideology of educationwho it should serve and how. The abolition of per
capita taxation and policies aimed at nationalisation of resources failed to provide
much needed economic growth, leading to a rapid decline in development. Parents
were left to shoulder the burden of educational expenditure. They built schools and
paid teacher salaries and provided as best they could books and other essential educa-
tional inputs. The Second Republic gave way, under enormous political upheaval, to
the Third Republic in 1992. What followed was a major reversal of policy including
of the language in education policy. French was re-introduced as the language of
instruction but conditions on the ground (lack of a capable teaching force) high-
lighted the disjuncture between educational policy formulation and the capacity to
implement such policies.
Between 1960 and 1992, Madagascar had become one of the poorest countries in
the world. It is not surprising therefore that it has received much attention from the
international donor community. In 2005 the Government of Madagascar received a
total of US$ 6 million (out of US$ 10 allocated) and was due to receive US$ 25
million in 2006. Another allocation of US$ 25 million for 2007 was approved by the
Catalytic Fund Strategy Committee in Beijing. With the support of the Fast Track
Initiative, the country is now looking outwards towards policies from elsewhere that
might assist it in its quest to strengthen a weak education system. Consistent with
global strategies to increase the competitive edge through education, Madagascar is
looking towards Singapore and South Africa and is experimenting with policies for
extending the period of primary education. It is also experimenting with a Belgian
version of competency-based teaching and learning in the primary sector. In this
respect, it is engaging with the politics of sellingsimilarities in global strategies to
improve educational outcomes for market position and gain. But Madagascar has
many national problems to overcome and needs, like other countries, to look more
closely at its own human resource capacity. In what is referred to as the politics of
gelling in this paper, Madagascar is increasing its capital investments to education.
It has taken on the responsibilities for all teacher salaries and has committed
substantial resources to better the inputs to education. Innovative and creative
indigenous policies aimed at strengthening the links between schools and communi-
ties and building educational quality all point in the direction of new forward-look-
ing policy initiatives.

Mauritius
The history of education and educational policy in Mauritius is interesting. The
Franco-Mauritian lite first promoted a limited development of Catholic mission
schools during the French rule in the 18th Century. The British attempted to
counter-balance this during the early 19th century with Protestant mission schools,
but the Catholic ethos remained dominant. The first French lyce on the island was
subsequently renamed the Royal College, and remains one of the most prestigious
 Educational change in developing countries 689

and competitive secondary schools of the island. For a long time access to secondary
education remained limited to an lite, but the influence of the British welfare state
eventually led to universal and free primary education in the years following the
Second World War. The secondary sector remained partially private and fee-paying
until after independence in 1968, but was gradually brought under government
control in the 1970s (Chinapah, 1985, p. 25). The system that evolved still bears the
traces of the British education system of the post-war years, with universal primary
education leading to a highly competitive eleven plus style examination, the Certif-
icate of Primary Education (CPE). The results of this examination govern access to
the most prestigious secondary schools, such as the Royal College, which are classi-
fied according to their relative excellence. Secondary education leads to the award of
the School Certificate and eventually the Higher School Certificate, very similar to
the diplomas of the same name that were formerly awarded in the UK and are still
current in Scotland. These examinations are to this day administered by the
Cambridge Examinations Syndicate.
This rigorously selective system effectively reinforces the social inequalities of the
society: the pupils already at an advantage if their home background can provide them
with some knowledge of French and English are likely to be more successful at the
CPE examination, and to go to the best-endowed secondary schools. These presti-
gious establishments can offer the best quality teaching and resources, and can
further offer the bonus of high quality private tuition, but at a corresponding price. In
1991, the Mauritius Examinations Syndicate commissioned a study of the correlation
of socio-economic family background with the level of success in the CPE examina-
tion. Not surprisingly, the schools whose success rate at the CPE examination was the
weakest drew their pupils from the least well-off social groups. The economic factor
is only one element in a complex set of determinants. Another is the relative distance
of the pupils mother tongue from the linguistic norms of the institution. Pupils whose
maternal language is Creole are obliged to confront a primary school system which
privileges English as a teaching medium, and expects them to learn French and
another Asian language as well. Even the most intensive supplementary tuition is not
always able to remedy such disadvantages, and although government agencies are
well aware of the problem, the political will to tamper with the situation is not always
strong when in the recent past attempts at reform have been known to provoke
enough hostility to bring down a government.
Despite the attempts of the Franco-Mauritian lite to promote French as the
teaching language, English was imposed as the principal vehicle of teaching in
Mauritian schools. Even so, French is taught in primary school, and represents the
language of culture, the media and intellectual life, supported by the French
government and the Agence de la Francophonie. Primary schools also undertake the
introduction of a third, optional Asian language, which might be Hindi, Telugu,
Urdu or Mandarin Chinese. Surprisingly, despite this demanding programme, the
vehicular language and the mother tongue common to most sectors of Mauritian
society, Mauritian Creole, has no official status and is not formally studied at
primary or at any other level.
690 D. Johnson

Unlike its neighbour, Madagascar, whose educational trajectory shows periods of

intense policy debate and radical policy shifts, language in educational policy in
Mauritius has evolved more steadily over the last 40 years. It did not mount a
rebellion against imposed policies of the colonial period choosing instead to align
itself closely with the British system. In the last few years, however, the politics of sell-
ing and gelling suggests a repositioning of Mauritius in an increasingly competitive,
knowledge based and globalised economy. In a budget speech of 2003/04 the govern-
ment spelt out its New Economic Agenda in which Mauritius is seen to have the
potential to become a regional knowledge hub. A knowledge hub is concerned with
the process of building up a countrys capacity to better integrate it with the worlds
increasing knowledge-based economy, whilst simultaneously exploring policy options
that have the potential to enhance economic growth. In this, Mauritius is modelling
itself on Singapore, a country whose similarities are a small land mass and lack of
natural resources. In Singapore, tertiary education has become a thriving export
industry built upon a hybrid of British and American systems of education. Previously
dominated by the British system, the Singaporeans took a strategic decision in 1997
to set up collaborative arrangements with American institutions. Mauritius is now
following a similar path and looking towards Australia, India and the UK to help it
develop a global tertiary education and training market, and to carve out a niche in
the South West Indian Ocean region in direct competition with South Africa. The
policy trajectory is shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3. Educational Policy Trajectory of Mauritius

Runion
Runion was uninhabited until 1647, when some mutineers from the French trading
post at Fort Dauphin in Madagascar were deposited on the island as a punishment.
The French East India Company established a colony on the island in 1665. The
colony rapidly became a prosperous slave-owning plantation economy, growing first
coffee and subsequently sugar cane. Slaves were brought in from all over Africa, but
mostly from neighbouring Madagascar and the east coast of Africa. Slavery was abol-
ished in 1848, and in order to continue the production of sugar cane, indentured
labour was brought in from India and China in the latter part of the 19th century. This
was followed by immigration from the Islamic parts of Northern India, and these

Figure 3. Educational policy trajectory of Mauritius

 Educational change in developing countries 691

disparate elements account for the ethnically very mixed population of the island
today, in this respect superficially comparable to the neighbouring island of Mauritius.
Runion has thus always been a French territory, with the exception of a short
occupation by the British during the Napoleonic wars, from 1810 to 1814. In 1946,
after the period of the German occupation of France, during which the island under-
went considerable hardship, the islands political leaders joined forces with those of
the French Caribbean islands to demand the status of French Dpartement, no longer
a colony but fully integrated into the French state, so that the Runionese population
could enjoy the same social benefits as the mainland population. Thus it is that the
island has today become a far-flung outpost of the European Union, like Martinique
and Guadeloupe in the Caribbean. Its currency is the Euro, and the island is
administered to all intents and purposes as if it were a province of mainland France.
Its education system is therefore structured in the same way as that of metropolitan
France. There is a generous provision of free nursery schools, universal primary
education from five years onwards, free secondary colleges and lyces; and the final
examination of the cycle is the French baccalaureate. The island boasts a large,
modern and well-endowed university, a teacher-training college (IUFM), a technol-
ogy institute (IUT), and the local educational administration is overseen by the
French civil service under the authority of the Rector of the Academy of Runion.
The educational trajectory of Runion is mapped onto that of France given that it
is, at least administratively speaking, an integral part of France. But culturally and
socially it has its own distinctive identity, one of the features of this being the wide-
spread use of Runionese Creole amongst the indigenous population. For Runionese
children, Creole is their mother tongue, rather than standard French. This has a
considerable impact on an education system based on standard French, which
traditionally takes little or no account of the mother tongue of a large proportion of
its pupils.
The French language is consecrated by Article 4 of the French Constitution as the
official language of the Republic. It is promoted as the vehicle of egalitarian values, as
the language of the revolutionary Declaration of universal human rights. As a result,
until very recently, Creole was marginalised and repressed by the Runionese school
system, often regarded as an incorrect and low-status variety of French. Yet 95% of
the population of the island use Creole, and 85% of schoolchildren in nursery schools
spontaneously use Creole to express themselves. Their teachers, on the other hand,
felt obliged to reject any use of Creole in their teaching and discouraged its use by
their pupils. The institutional inferiority of Creole has been clearly evident in its
minimal presence in the administration, the education system and the media. This
situation is clearly one of diglossia, where one language is regarded as inferior to
another, and the values it transports are not given equal recognition in the islands
society.
In the last years of the previous Socialist government, in 20002002, the then
Minister of Education Jack Lang introduced some far-reaching policy changes in rela-
tion to the role of minority regional languages in the French education system. This
was in line with a European directive on the status of minority languages, and granted
692 D. Johnson

Figure 4. Educational policy trajectory of Reunion Island

official recognition to the teaching of these regional languages in state schools. A

previous law, the Loi Deixonne of 1951 had already legitimised such a move, but
for largely political reasons it was not implemented in the Creole-speaking overseas
departments of the French republic, no doubt for fear it would encourage autonomist
or separatist movements. The new policy of the Lang ministry recommended the
introduction of Creole as a legitimate university subject, and authorised the creation
of degrees and teaching diplomas in the language. This has now been implemented
and has helped to raise the profile of Creole as a legitimate form of expression. This
set of events marks the possible divergence of Runionese education policy from that
of the French metropole. It will take some time, however, for the legacy of its margin-
alisation to be overcome, but what is hoped for is that it will encourage a greater
participation in the school system by Creole-speaking parents. The educational
trajectory for Runion is given in Figure 4.
Figure 4. Educational Policy Trajectory of Reunion Island

South Africa
South Africa is still shaping its post-Apartheid educational policy having gained its
independence in 1994. The biggest task involved the creation of a unitary sytem of
education, effectively repairing the ideology of separate development for the differ-
ent racial groups of the country, White, Coloured Asian and African. Under
the Apartheid policy of the Afrikaner Nationalist government that governed since
1948, the arbitrary division of the countrys population led to a proliferation of differ-
ent educational administration.
The question of what language in educational policy should be used in schools in
South Africa was already a controversial topic in the 1940s. A strong anti-British feel-
ing was taking root amongst the Afrikaner population, sparked to some degree by
South African participation in the war. The two political parties at the timethe
United Party which represented largely English speaking White South Africans and
the Nationalist party which represented the Afrikaner populationboth agreed that
all children attending state schools should study the two official languages (at that
time: English and Afrikaans). However, they differed on how bilingualism should be
 Educational change in developing countries 693

achieved. For the United Party the preference was for instruction in mother tongue
in the early years and a gradual introduction of the second language as a supplemen-
tary medium as the child progresses to secondary education. For the National Party,
however, the preference was that mother tongue instruction should be compulsory all
the way through to university level education. The second language could be studied
as a subject. It further proposed that English and Afrikaans speaking children should
be separated into uni-lingual schools. So by the time the Nationalist Party came to
power in 1948 it was determined to segregate and differentiate education between
cultural and racial groups and to exercise control over education in the interests of
Afrikanerdom. This had for the Afrikaner become more than a struggle for language
in education; rather, a struggle in which Volk or nation was at stake and the role of
the Dutch Reform Church in this debate was pivotal. As reverend William Nicol put
it:
There are indications that our church must get ready to fight again for the preservation of
our separate schools and thereby to assure the continued existence of our church. It is the
firm policy of our church that our children must be educated in separate schools with
Afrikaans as our medium Not only the salvation of our volk but the preservation of our
church depends in large measure on separate schools. (Cited in Malherbe, 1977, p. 44)
These sentiments and the fact that Afrikaans grew rapidly as a language of teaching
and Afrikaner culture, led to the rise in Afrikaans medium schools and universities.
The ideological nature of Apartheid separatist educational policies, based on
Calvanism and Afrikaner nationalism was further underlined by the passing of the
Bantu Education Act in 1953. Education explicitly sought to divide and separate
racial and cultural groups and to ensure Afrikaner dominance.
The major points in the rapidly growing educational policy trajectory of South
Africa include a period of rebellinga full scale transformation of the educational
policy environment to include the de-racialisation of schools and a broadening of
the language in education policy. There are many instances in South Africa of the
foreign example in education. The restructuring of the South African Qualifi-
cations Framework for example drew much on the British and Australian systems
and the restructuring of the curriculum framework into a model of outcomes-
based education, drawing its initial impetus from work within the labour move-
ments of South Africa and Australia. An interesting recent example of the most
explicit policy borrowing, name and all, comes from the adoption of the OFSTED
(Office of Standards in Education) as the backbone of the South African inspec-
tion system. The policy has more or less settled down and has many indigenous
features (mainly because of wide spread resistance from the teacher unions), which
interestingly have had a return influence in the country of origin. South Africa
has varied the model to include school-based inspection, a variant now being taken
up in the British model (interview with official in Gauteng Department of
Education, 2006).
In respect of gelling, South Africa has entered an interesting phase. In a recent
speech to the Association of African Universities at a conference in Cape Town in
2005, South African President Thabo Mbeki argued the following:
694 D. Johnson

Figure 5. Educational policy trajectory of South Africa

Undoubtedly, today, as in the past, higher education has an important role to play in the
economic, social, cultural and political renaissance of our continent and in the drive for
the development of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS). The challenge for an African
university should be viewed as a call that insists that all critical and transformative educa-
tors in Africa embrace an indigenous African world-view and root their nations education
paradigms in an indigenous socio-cultural and epistemological framework. Among others,
this implies that all educational curricula in Africa should have Africa as their focus, and
as a result, be indigenous-grounded and orientated. Failure to do so may result in educa-
tion becoming alien and irrelevant, as is seen to be the case with the legacy of colonial and
neo-colonial education systems.

The speech has caused concern in the higher education sector where many academics
and researchers are looking outwards to the wider world, rather than inwards. How
this tension is resolved in policy terms will be keenly observed. The educational
trajectory for South Africa is given in Figure 5.
Figure 5. Educational Policy Trajectory of South Africa

Conclusions
The conceptual framework proposed here appears to have allowed us to profile the
educational policy trajectories of the four societies in the south-west Indian Ocean.
Using the metaphors as an organising rubric, we see that these countries have
responded in different ways to often similar sets of political circumstances. Madagascar
and Runion were both subjected to French colonial rule and saw the the imposition
of French as a language of instruction. The Madagascan trajectory involves first a
reform of existing language in education policies and then later, a complete rebellion
against imposed educational policy. Runion on the other hand chose a political path
that tied it to the French system. Rather than join the independence movements so
prevalent at the time, it sought the status of a dpartement and has remained an integral
part of the French system. In Madagascar, the status of Malagasy was an important
spur for first adapting and later rebelling against colonial policies. Yet, we saw a rever-
sion to French and interestingly a flirtation with English. In Runion the status of
Creole is a point of diversion in the policy trajectory. Runion wants to align itself with
a European, indeed a world-wide movement to recognise the right of minority
languages. The status of Creole, referred to as subtractive bilingualism, is affecting
pedagogy and educational outcomes in the Island.
 Educational change in developing countries 695

Mauritius and South Africa were both strongly influenced by Britain. South Africa
engaged in a long fierce struggle over language, first the Afrikaner population assert-
ing its language rights over the British and then later, the proposed use of Afrikaans
as a teaching language in African schools acting as a catalyst for wide-spread anti-
Apartheid educational protests and the development of post-Apartheid language in
education policies. The trajectory of educational change in Mauritius evolved more
peacefully. The educational terrain was less contested, although the issue of an
additional language as a possible examinable subject in a highly academically compet-
itive is creating some concerns. Mauritius is gearing up to become a regional knowl-
edge hub, modelling itself on the example of Singapore, while South Africa seems set
for a long internal struggle with national leaders arguing for indigenous knowledge
systems.
The conceptual framework proposed here seems to have much promise as a
method for documenting educational policy change, the metaphors acting as a rubric
of distinct kinds of international political relations. By using the framework, any
analysis of educational policy choice benefits from an easily generalisable political
frame of reference. The trajectories of educational policy change were generated from
historical sources which formed an initial narrative. The narrative and emerging
graphic representation of a historical trajectory was then used as a basis for interviews
with senior educational representatives from the four societies discussed in this
article. Used in this way, the initial trajectories acted as heuristic devices, prompting
debate and discussion and the further refining of the trajectory. In this way, the model
would seem to act as a useful methodological tool for obtaining, recording and profil-
ing information about educational policy choices and changes in the developing
world.

Notes on contributor
David Johnson is a University Lecturer in Comparative Education (Developing
Countries) and a Fellow of St Antonys College, Oxford. His main research
interests include educational policy analysis in Developing Countries and longi-
tudinal studies of childrens learning outcomes. He has researched widely in
Africa, South Asia and Latin America.

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