This paper analyses the contextualised determinants affecting the academic achievement of secondary school students in Mauritius. A mixed methodology was used to understand the effect of the determinants on students’ achievement considering the academic progression of learners from one point (CPE: Examination marking the end of primary schooling) to another (NG9A: Checkpoint assessment after three years of secondary schooling).  The first phase had a non-positivist epistemological stand using the qualitative method of ‘focus group discussion’ to identify the determinants and then validate the TIMSS questionnaire. The second phase had a post-positivist epistemological stand where an amended version of the standardised international questionnaire TIMSS was administered to collect data from a sample of 600 students. The primary data were analysed to produce a Linear Multiple Regression Model. The findings reveal that 90.1% achievement can be explained by the variables of school leadership, student, socio-economic factor, and teacher (R square = 0.9.1; p < 0.05).  The model shows that school leadership has a higher positive correlation on (β=0.419) students’ achievement followed by student factor (β= 0.227), tuition teacher (β= 0.154), school teacher (β= 0.117) and socioeconomic status (β= 0.048).

The number of students opting for science subjects, particularly biology, beyond compulsory school level has been decreasing substantially in recent decades in Mauritius. This decline is of major concern in an era when scientific literacy and the need for science-based employment are considered fundamental to face both local and global challenges. Although several studies have identified a range of factors to explain students' choice of subjects and the low number of students opting for biology at post-compulsory level, there is little known about how policies respond to the issue. In this article we explore how policies are responding to the decline in the number of students opting for biology at the post-compulsory education level in Mauritius, drawing on 25 biology education policy documents and focus groups with twelve students, ten educational officials and six parents. The findings of this study suggest that the actions undertaken in attempts to address the issue of poor uptake of biology could have been undertaken in a more coherent way, with an appropriate overarching policy frame to inform the actions. We argue that current policy actions are too state-centred, with policy makers adopting a top-down approach where policies are simply meant to be implemented by schools. We argue that more needs to be done to acknowledge and incorporate inputs from other stakeholders, including students.

One of the major reasons expounding the persisting decline in students' academic achievement and high drop-out rate at the secondary education level in Mauritius, despite the implementation of several educational reforms including the current 'Nine Years Continuous Basic Education' (NYCBE), is that reforms are often developed using a top-down approach with limited grounding into the voices of stakeholders. It is in this perspective that this study, underpinned by the 'general system' theory, uses a two-phases 'sequential exploratory mixed methodology' to capture the voices of different stakeholders to develop a Structural Equation Model (SEM) that showcases the correlations between key contextualised factors and students' academic achievements. The first phase, with a qualitative approach, identified the contextualised factors affecting students' academic achievement in Mauritius, by analysing data derived from 'Focus Group Discussions involving 16 participants, representatives of different educational stakeholders. The second phase, with a quantitative approach, developed a SEM using data collected from 600 students, captured through a survey questionnaire. The generated SEM, with a good fit indices, did not only depict greater impacts of school leadership, followed by student factor, tuition teacher factor, school teacher factor and socio-economic factor respectively on the academic achievements of secondary students, but also showcased the mediated effects between the factors, advocating for a holistic approach to improve school effectiveness in Mauritius. This study provides key information informing policy makers, educational specialists, and school administrative on the way forward towards improved school effectiveness.

Science represents the body of knowledge which has been shaping the world, and it forms the basis of every discipline ranging from the core science to philosophy.  Fundamentally, the understanding of science is two-fold, where one is related to the science of the common people while the other is related to high-order scientific ideas, theories, and research. In this era of the fourth industrialisation, the challenge is not limited to the training of top scientists but to making science accessible to every one by bringing science to the lay public. This is where the ‘Public understanding of sustainability science (PUSS)’ represents a key concept as it aims at transforming the lay public into informed citizens with the appropriate knowledge, know-how, skills, attitudes, and values required to understand and face current and future challenges such as the energy crisis, climate change, emergence, and re-emergence of new epidemics, using an integrated approach. The ‘Public Understanding of Science (PUS)’, as a dimension, originated during the late 1980s from the concept of ‘science literacy’ as a response to the public deficit discourse at that time, where the focus of science was shifting from knowledge to attitudes. And during the last decade, the public deficit discourse on trust deficiency shifted the paradigm from PUS to ‘science in-and-of society’.  However, today the discourse has reached a new dimension where the public trust deficit is already being questioned and challenged. As a response to such discourse, this case study analysed the current public interrogations and challenges using the ‘co-production of knowledge model’ with the lens of the public deficit theory to better prepare the public to face current and future challenges.  Consequently, the PUSS has been identified as the new paradigm to address the current public deficits.

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