Children are enrolled in primary school from the age of five and enter Standard I and move automatically up to Standard IV. As the child reaches Standard IV, there is a streaming process that follows. The system is highly competitive and a two-year preparation starts since Standard V up to Standard VI for the end of primary school examinations, the CPE (Certificate of Primary Education). The CPE is a national examination carried out in all the schools of the island following a grading system. Five subjects are compulsory and taken into account for the ranking process; English, French, Mathematics, Science, and History and Geophaphy. The Asian languages are included in the grading process. This examination was like a bottleneck from primary to secondary schools, when the ranking system was in force (expounded in the next paragraph). For instance, out of 25,629 candidates in 1996, 16,737 passed all grades included (Ministry of Education and Scientific Research, 1998). Among them, only about 8,000 were admitted to secondary schools, both State and Private of the island, and some 3,000 found their way to Basic Prevocational or technical school. Over 14,000 students are said to be, ‘left without a future’. On the whole, the CPE examination was basically like a kind of streaming at the national level.
