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A brief overview of the pupils’ status in ZEP schools would indicate that it is
common feature for a teacher in a ZEP school to be faced with a class where the
daily rate of absenteeism is at least 10% and where 22% of students live in poverty
as many of them lack basic food, shelter, and health care. The above fi gures cry out
for the Government’s actions to protect the Rights of the Children of the Republic
(United Nations, Child Rights Convention, 1990). In particular Article 3 and Article
19 of the Convention emphasise the responsibilities of the state parties to ensure
care and protection of the children and initiate actions to prevent neglect or negligent
treatment of the children.
The application of the Children Rights Convention and adopting the guidelines for
achieving the EFA Goals by 2015 make of the implementation of the ZEP project in the
educational landscape of Mauritius a guarantee for the state to meet the Millennium
Development Goals 1 and 2 of the United Nations. On the one hand as universal
primary education is achieved and sustained, on the other hand, government fi ght
social exclusion and eradicate absolute poverty through the National education
system. ZEP proposes not only to have local actions in the primary school but also
proposed to train parents and enrol the participation of local communities in the
concerted efforts to provide education to the children.
It is here argued that the ZEP project strategy development some 10 years back
has been avant gardiste of the Education First Initiative of the UN General Secretary
where the 3 pillars of its success are (i) Put every child in school (ii) Ensure quality of
learning (iii) foster global citizenship . The ZEP project proposes to accomplish these
goals by its deployment as school based level. The ZEP strategy of the Mauritian
Government bases itself on sound and strong premises so that it becomes critical to
ensure the safe and healthy development of ALL the children of the Republic before
one can think of empowering them.
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