Insights into the Challenges of Evaluating Young Learners’ Intercultural Competences for Better Living-Togetherness

In this paper, we narrow our lens on a pioneering endeavour for better ‘living togetherness’ within an ethnically diverse society initiated in 2018 by Catholic Education authorities in Mauritius. This was done through the introduction of an ‘Intercultural Education’ programme in all 66 Catholic primary and secondary schools of the island. In particular, we focus on the challenges of evaluating intercultural competences developed by young learners, given that most frameworks deal with interculturalism from a language perspective and have mainly been worked out for mature learners. Underpinned by insights from teachers, heads of schools and curriculum developers, our findings reinforced perspectives from the existing literature on the need to use language judiciously while assessing intercultural competences, the way performance in Intercultural Education should be reported, and aspects to be considered in the test item design. Finally, we try to push frontiers by highlighting the centrality of teachers’ and parents’ roles in the assessment of intercultural competences.