3rd August 2021

The Board Members

Clavis International Primary School

Mount Ory

Moka - Mauritius 

Dear Members of the Board,

Re: Admission to Le Bocage International School from Clavis International Primary School

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

We the here undersigned, members of the Clavis Primary School Parent Teacher Association, are writing to you following the event whereby 13 of our children, students of Clavis International Primary School (“Clavis”), were refused admission to Le Bocage International School (“LBIS”) in questionable circumstances. As you are aware, the aforesaid decision of LBIS was reverted following representations made by parents directly concerned with this situation as well as those made by the Clavis Primary School Parent Teacher Association to the Headmaster also copied to the Board. We wish, at the very outset and by this letter, to express our concern with this state of affairs which is unprecedented in this history of Clavis/LBIS.

We, by this letter, hereby unanimously confirm that express and implied representations were made to us by the préposés, employees, officers of Clavis, having ostensible authority, both at the time when applications of our children in Clavis were being contemplated and also on several occasions thereafter that the natural progression from Clavis is one that would lead to LBIS and this without any hurdle.

As you ought to be fully aware, enrolling our children with your institution was made with views and legitimate expectations that our children would benefit from the IB education throughout.  The IB system does not stop at year 6. The IB system starts with Clavis and ends with LBIS. It is therefore unconceivable for you to claim at this stage that there is no guarantee for entrance in 2023 onwards, (and subsequent academic years) to LBIS even in cases where the children have met the minimum requirements. 

Please further note that at no time were we hinted with the slightest possibility of facing the dire situation we are being put before, i.e. one where the children would stand the possibility of being denied admission to LBIS and therefore forced into another education system in relation to which they have not been prepared for. Such an event may have devastating effects on a child’s development and future and is not therefore even a remote possibility to be envisaged.

We wish to hold in no uncertain terms that the future of the children of Clavis cannot rest upon arbitrary decisions at the level of LBIS. Any claim on your part that you do not have any say whatsoever with regard to the decision taken by LBIS under the guise that “…Clavis and LBIS are not formally connected and each school administers individual programmes …”, is untenable given that the nexus between Clavis and LBIS is an inextricable one for all intents and purposes or at least as has been portrayed to us over the years. In that regard also you cannot disclaim responsibility from the present situation.

Access to education is a sacrosanct right and no effort should be spared in upholding this fundamental right especially when you have taken up the responsibility of providing education for over decades. A refusal of admission into the secondary stream of the IB system at LBIS to students of Clavis, the feeder school of the former, in an unprecedented manner, in defiance of established custom and in an arbitrary and clouded fashion is akin to a refusal of access to education. 

In the light of the above, you are formally urged to take the necessary steps to remedy the current situation and reinstate the established natural transition, as has always been the intention of all, of Clavis students to LBIS.