After the country became independent in 1968, education became one of the main preoccupations of the Mauritian Government to meet the new challenges awaiting the country. Considerable investment of resources, both human and material, has been put into the Education sector and impressive progress has been achieved in terms of free, universal, compulsory primary education, free textbooks, free secondary education and a fairly wide range of higher education courses at the University of Mauritius.
Education has been free through the secondary level since 1976 and through the post-secondary level since 1988. The government has made an effort to provide adequate funding for education, occasionally straining tight budgets and even subsidised a great part of the expenditure in the Private Confessional schools, that is, schools under the control of the Catholic Church. However, the pre-primary schools are still privately owned mostly.