Education of Disadvantaged Children in OIC:
The Key to Escape from Poverty
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Inspectorates can have their budgets reduced if they cannot justify the reasons of their under
performance.
Conclusion
Both the education administrative data and the DHS data demonstrated that Senegal has made
great strides over the past decade in terms of access to schooling by the general population but
also by poor children. Poverty remains a main determinant/barrier to further schooling but both
DHS data and poverty studies have shown that the extent of its influence has been slowly waning
in time. While the HOI and Shapley decomposition point to a lessening of inequalities over time,
vulnerability and inequalities between different regions of the country and different population
groups remain strong. In terms of gender parity, Senegal’s case can help ‘bust the myth’ of girls
being disadvantaged in Muslim-majority countries as the gender parity index is fairly equal and
slightly in favour of girls.
In line with global trends, the data analyses pointed to disparities in access to education linked to
income poverty, rural areas, geographical location, gender, disability, language and minority. Low
access in Senegal is also linked to deficiencies in learning processes, problems with the devolution
and decentralization processes, weak coordination between public/private and non-profit
sectors, inadequate budget efficiencies, uneven distribution of population, and religious
background in some of the districts with the lowest access to schooling.
The increasing access trends have been accompanied by a decline in the quality of education, with
worsening completion, repetition and drop-out rates. In most regions, teachers lack facilities such
as classrooms and textbooks which, combined with the low rate of educational supervision,
reinforces inequality in the education system. Public schools are no longer attractive despite their
greater numbers (and therefore greater accessibility).
The alignment of the PAQUET policies with the overall country strategy as well as its strategic
focuses on quality and improved governance results in relevant focus/reform goals given the
access to education challenges in the country. The pilots on modernization of the Daaras, and the
introduction of bilingual schools are hopefully going to be scaled up. As such it is important to
devise a clear implementation strategy for the policies and the scaling of successful programs as
well as create the fiscal space to mobilise more resources needed for the policy and program
implementation. This includes mobilising resources towards social protection schemes to
financially support the poorest households in sending their children to school.
Recommendations
Policies toaddress FailingSystems
Cultural adaptation, including Public consultations: One of the main challenges highlighted in the
report is the need for the integration of alternative models of education to respond to the strong
demand from the population for alternative models to the formal French model. As such, the
current reforms and any future policies aimed at addressing this challenge must include extensive
consultations with the population in order to understand their education demands. Since 80% of