Education in Burkina Faso: The call of F-SYNTER

This is a statement from the Federation of National Unions of Education and Research Workers (F-SYNTER) on the situation in the education sector in Burkina Faso.

F-SYNTER is following with great attention the development of the crisis situation that the education sector is going through recently, in particular in connection with the anti-popular and anti-educational measures taken by the authorities and relating to the organization. Exams.

The pupils, in a legitimate and courageous manner, have engaged in actions of struggle which are gaining in scale over the days. The first dramatic consequences of this new offensive against the rights of educational actors initiated by Mr. Stanislas OUARO, Minister of National Education, Literacy and the Promotion of National Languages ​​(MENAPLN) are the death of a student in Kongoussi following a movement of crowds of students and many injured students, due to the violent intervention of the forces of repression who besiege schools and enemy camps.

Our Federation offers its sincere condolences to the family of the victim and expresses its wishes for speedy recovery to the injured. While the government cuts down on a savage crackdown on students, its minister is touring state institutions to promote the assizes on education to be held next September. We may wonder why the “reforms” against which the students are protesting could they not wait for this famous meeting?

To fully understand the logic of Minister OUARO and his government, it is important to understand the context and the issues underlying their approach. Indeed, the 2018-2019 school year marked by the assignments of several dozen activists and union officials was the beginning in the education sector of the vast offensive of the MPP and associated government against democratic rights and the social gains dearly wrested by our people through, among other things, the struggles of workers, pupils and students for several decades and in particular during the popular uprising of October 2014 and the heroic resistance to the putsch of September 2015.

These struggles, which have undermined various parts of the policy of the neocolonial State of Burkina Faso, have in the educational field, known an important stage with the great protest action of the National Coordination of Education Unions (CNSE) sanctioned. by a historic memorandum of understanding which mobilized tens of thousands of workers with the support of the parents of students and the public and forced the government to concede avenues of solutions to certain major problems of the education system in its pre-school teaching components , primary, post-primary and secondary.

The mission of Minister OUARO consisted in emptying the gains of the protocol of their content while attempting to destroy the combative trade union organizations and to continue the policies imposed by international institutions in this case the World Bank and the IMF. The reforms affecting the BEPC and Baccalaureate exams are part of this dynamic. Their first victims are undoubtedly the students. It is therefore fortunate that they saw the stakes of this forfeiture and that they took their responsibility, and this, through a fight in an organized framework.

Succeeding to Mr. Jean Martin COULIBALY less skilful but who tried to achieve the same disastrous objectives, Minister OUARO although a university teacher himself stands out as one of the greatest gravediggers that the educational system of our country have known. The following misdeeds, in a little over three years in office, amply attest to this:

• the suspension of the wages of more than 700 workers illegally, then the correction of this suspension of wages for some (who would have asked for forgiveness) while maintaining it for others;
• the fraudulent redeployment of union activists and officials under the guise of need for service;
• the translation into a disciplinary council of union officials, including the Secretary General of the CGT-B, on spurious grounds;
• the taking of measures to overload trade union officials with the aim of preventing them from carrying out their trade union activities properly. This attitude fits in well with a questioning of democratic and trade union freedoms;
• the removal of union officials from their posts of responsibility for no other reason than their union activities;
• the suspension of the free education measure for 6 to 16 years old which was to take effect from the 2020-2921 school year;
• the abolition of mock exams, which have been pedagogical facilities agreed for decades for the preparation of pupils for school examinations;
• the assignment by the State of the children of the people admitted to entry into 6^th and in 2de in private establishments with agreement with the obligation of parents to pay for their education;
• the non-payment on time of the salaries of State scholarship students, sometimes accumulating more than six (6) months of arrears;
• the maintenance of administrative managers in positions despite the elements of mismanagement that overwhelm them causing crises in the establishments;
• the introduction of a fraudulent and discriminatory provision in article 75 of section 4 of decree No. 2020-245 / PRES / PM / MFPTPS / MINEDID on the special status of the education, training and employment promotion profession ;
• the decoration of union officials with proof of their support for a finalization of the 2019-2020 school year. Minister OUARO claims twenty-eight (28) unions in the education sector, while there are no more than ten (10) representative unions and he forgets to specify that nearly half of these 28 unions have been created for only three (3) years, that is to say since he has been at the head of the ministry;
• Etc.

In the light of this long, non-exhaustive list, it appears that the trajectory of the education system driven by the regime of Roch Marc Christian KABORE and implemented by Stanislas OUARO is fundamentally contrary to the interests of the social actors who are the students, the workers of education and parents. This is why, in accordance with its positions taken since the first inclinations of these exam reforms, F-SYNTER reaffirms that:

• the measures taken on the abolition of elective subjects in the Life and Earth Sciences (SVT) and History and Geography examinations without an appropriate revision of the curricula are only intended to reinforce the selective character of an examination which leaves on the floor at each session more than 60% of the candidates;
• the objective of the reform of the Baccalaureate is far from being a simple attachment of the organization of this examination to MENAPLN. It is about closing the automatic access of the children of our people to public higher education as is currently done. It is in this sense that we must understand the frenzied agitation bordering on hysteria of certain founders who see in this measure of limiting public registrations prospects for a substantial increase in candidates for registration in the schools. private universities, so more juicy business on the backs of parents, the same way it happens in 6^th. That technicians have been associated does not change anything, OUARO itself is an education “technician” who serves without qualms the interests of the enemies of a quality education accessible to the children of the people.

As part of the announced meetings on education, Minister OUARO is touring all those who can help him with the packages he is preparing, thus giving the feeling to national opinion that he is part of a process. democratic, that he is a democrat. This is far from the case and the packages listed above allow any honest person to be convinced of it. And if there was a need for additional evidence, just refer to the audio that has circulated a lot on social networks where the Minister addressing the MPP activists of the structured sectors of education accuses the Gambian dictator Yaya DJAME for having lost power while he has the state apparatus. A meeting on education under the leadership of a Minister who refers to a dictator of the caliber of DJAME will be far from democratic.

These reform issues have come on top of an already difficult situation in terms of education in terms of lack of infrastructure and equipment, lack of personnel, overcrowding of staff, poor management of establishments and services, poor living conditions for students and their supervisors, inappropriate responses to the impact of security and health crises on education (more than 300,000 students excluded from school), non-compliance with commitments signed with workers’ organizations through memoranda of understanding, etc.

As a result of the above, the F-SYNTER:

1. denounces the government’s current orientations in questioning the social and democratic gains of the populations in general and in the education sector in particular;
2. expresses its support for the just and saving struggle underway by schools organized within their authentic structure. It encourages them to continue their fight for the advent of a quality school at the service of all the children of our people;
3. calls on the authorities, particularly those in charge of education issues, to be more lucid and to depart urgently from the path of repression and corrupting approaches by education actors fighting over their legitimate concerns. This path cannot prosper in the face of organizations of struggle. Rather, they must initiate a strategy of sincere and productive dialogue and consider abandoning anti-educational reforms. It already holds them responsible for the current situation and its consequences as well as for any deterioration of the climate in the sector;
4. invites parents and public opinion in general to look into the directions that the government is trying to take, which, not content with having strongly withdrawn from education spending, seeks to erect new obstacles to children’s access from the people to quality education;
5. calls on education and research workers, in particular the F-SYNTER structures, to develop active solidarity with students with whom they share the same difficult working conditions. The whining of those who are short of arguments and who develop the far-fetched and hackneyed thesis of manipulation of students by teachers must not distract them from this duty which must integrate the construction of unity of action around the problems of education and research. To do this, they must draw on the experience of the Pupils and Students Coordination and SYNTER around the same Baccalaureate issue in 1999-2000.

Vive la F-SYNTER !

Long live unity between pupils, students and education and research workers!

Bread and freedom for the people!

For the Federal National Office

Souleymane BADIEL

General secretary