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Education of Disadvantaged Children in OIC:

The Key to Escape from Poverty

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early grade primary students with less qualified teachers putting them at higher risk of repetition

and drop-out. In order to avoid nefarious incentives it is therefore important to define

‘results’/‘performance’ of schools as more than strictly the test performance of students on

national assessments.

Policies

Long-term strategic plans

The establishment of the Ten-Year Education and Training Program (PDEF)

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for the period

2000-2011 saw a greater influx of public resources into the education system. Between 2000 and

2011, allocations to the education from the government budget increased from 105 billion to 423

billion CFAF, with an average annual growth rate of 12.5%. The availability of these resources

made it possible to improve results and achieve the goals especially around

the first

of the three

PDEF strategic axes i.e. (1) expanding access to all levels of education system, (2) improving the

quality of learning and (3) strengthening the devolution/decentralization. The quality of learning

did not improve and the implementation of the devolution has been patchy. The appraisal of the

PDEF and the situation of education constituted the basis for the elaboration of the (2013-2025)

“Program for Improving Quality, Equity and Transparency “(PAQUET). PAQUET is the strategy

for the emergence of the "Education for the improvement of human capital” (Pillar II of the

“Emerging Senegal Plan: PSE” 2014-2035). Reforms affecting different levels of education have

been launched since 2013 in order to experiment with new practices or to generalize existing

good practices.

The strategic priorities include (1) establishing the 10-year compulsory basic universal education

and reach out of school children (2) focusing on quality by reforming teacher training, the

relevance of the curriculum, prioritize reading, mathematics, sciences and civic education (3)

establish monitoring and evaluation processes to support the move from input-based

management of the education sector into results-based management and create accountability

systems to enhance school staff’s productivity (4) improve the efficiency of the education sector

budget (5) improve transparency (and thus accountability) by increasing consultations with

parents, local communities, private sector and civil society in the planning, implementation and

review of education programs.

The rest of the section will cover select policy interventions aiming at different objectives (quality,

supply-side, demand-side, governance)

Quality Improvement

The PDEF era saw the successful implementation of some reform efforts and evaluated pilot

activities. These include establishing regular national assessments that have been used regularly

over the past decade as part of a learning assessment system. In addition, new curricula were

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All program descriptions are in English but acronyms refer to the acronyms in French