Education of Disadvantaged Children in OIC:
The Key to Escape from Poverty
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designed, one for the primary level in 2005 and one for junior secondary school level in 2011. The
new pedagogical approach was a novelty for all teachers who, as of 2011, were meant to be
gradually upgraded but in practice, newly recruited teachers were still being trained with the old
program and the in-service training was not updated. To address this issue, Regional Centers for
Training of Education Staff (Centres Regionaux de Formation du Personnel de l'Education -
CRFPE) were created to replace former teacher training institutions and regional training poles.
In the past, with the aim of increasing access to schooling, the minimum academic requirements
to become a teacher had been lowered to having completed junior secondary school and obtained
a “Brevet de Fin d’Etudes in order to recruit higher numbers of teachers. With the establishment
of the CRFPE, the minimum academic requirement to enter these centres was raised to the
Baccalaureate level.
Based on these PDEF reforms, several of the projects under PAQUET are interventions that focus
on improvements to the quality of education, in particular with regards to teacher training. These
include the Project to Strengthen the Teaching of Mathematics, Science and Technology (PREMST)
and the Partnership for the Improvement of Reading and Mathematics in the Elementary
(PALME).
These projects are complimentary to the Quality Improvement and Equity of Basic Education
(PAQEEB). As is stated in its title, PAQEEB combines a focus on quality improvement together
with equity by focusing efforts in poor, underserved areas. In terms of quality, PAQEEB focuses
on improving learning outcomes of students especially in grades 1 through 4 while it also aims to
improve quality in later grades as well. For junior secondary schools PAQEEB supports the
development of a national program that improves science and math teaching and learning. In
terms of equity, the project aims to improve access to basic education, especially in the Kaffrine,
Tambacounda, Matam, Louga and Diourbel regions, the regions with the highest numbers of out
of school children.
Cultural Adaptation
On the supply-side interventions, PAQUET includes the Schools and National Languages in Africa
(ELAN) project and the Project of Modernization of Daaras.
Bilingual schools: The ELAN project is part of the initiative ELAN-Africa which was launched by
eight French-speaking countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon,
Mali, Niger, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Senegal). Believing that the language of
schooling acts as a barrier for many children in French-speaking Africa for obtaining a healthy
basic education, especially in rural areas where French is rarely spoken (if at all), the ELAN-Africa
initiative aims to promote and gradually introduce a bilingual curriculum at the primary level
using two languages (a national language and French). Being taught in French and not in their
local language leads to higher drop-out rates and lower performance scores. This argument is
illustrated by PASEC results (see Fig. 7), which show that Burundi pupils perform better in terms
of literary andmathematical skills. It is the only country in the sample that was educating its pupil
in their native tongue at primary level, and gradually introducing French. Other factors are