Dakar, May 19 (APS) – The education system faces “ gaps that must be settled definitively ” for the success of the Program to improve the Quality, equity and transparency in the education, underlined the Executive Director of the Coalition of Synergistic Organizations for the Defense of Education (Cosydep).
“These gaps must be settled definitively if we want to ensure that the norms and standards in terms of quality are respected,” said Cheikh Mbow on Wednesday on the sidelines of the pre-review meeting of the Ministry of Education with civil society actors active in the sector.
On behalf of the civil society organizations present at the meeting, he cited the gap linked to statistics, since he said, ” we cannot plan anything if there is not sufficient and reliable data. ”.
From this perspective, said Cheikh Mbow, “ the society organizations active in the field of education consider that the government of Senegal should give even more attention in terms of resources in favor of the Directorate of Planning and of the education reform to collect the data that speaks volumes and that allow the planning of responses to the different gaps ”.
Among these gaps, there are also inputs such as classrooms, shortages in textbooks but also in teachers estimated at 40,000.
“There is a gap in terms of respect for commitments and civil society organizations are there to ensure the right to education and its effectiveness and this is the primary responsibility of the State”, a – he added.
For the Executive Director of Cosydep, “ it is not acceptable that in 2021 children are still in the streets instead of going to school, do not know how to read and write and are not in any educational offer , not in a traditional school, nor in a Daara even less in a place of learning a trade ”.
Each year, he noted, “despite the efforts of the government, the same problems are posed, the same solutions are provided with the same outcomes”.
“We must work to be more pragmatic by having targeted recommendations that address specific issues for which we jointly decide to resolve them definitively,” he argued.
For Cheikh Mbow, “the right to education must be a major concern of the government but also of all of us to put pressure and no longer see a single child who cannot read or write”.
Coming to chair the meeting, the Director of Planning and Education Reform (DPRE), Cheikhna Lam, noted that looking at the results of the past year, despite the pandemic context, for the most part, the indicators have been met.
Indeed, according to him, from the onset of the disease, the government restructured the types of activities in relation to the context to adapt to the management of piloting in a pandemic period.
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He noted with satisfaction the capacity of the system as a whole to adapt to this pandemic.
The meeting is part of the overall framework of the review process that started last week with regional reviews around the governors and inspectors of the Academy which continues with organizations active in the field of education.
Thursday and Friday, the Ministry of Education will be with elected officials and technical and financial partners who will complete the pre-review sessions.
“These sessions make it possible to collect the mass of observations, remarks, recommendations in order to jointly assess the steps taken and to project oneself on the most significant challenges to constantly improve the education system”, he said. Explain.
Meetings with the different families of actors who also allow us to combine efforts towards the major sectoral review of the education sector scheduled for the next 28th.
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