The 2024-2025 school year began in early October in a large number of West African countries. On October 1, Wathi organized a round table on “Innovations in the education sector in Senegal: contributions from the private sector and NGOs”.
Yes, this roundtable was part of a series of Wathi online and in-person events on education issues since the start of the year, in partnership with the Irish Embassy in Senegal. This European country experienced colonization almost as recently as African countries and until a few decades ago was a poor country with high emigration.
Like all countries which have significantly improved the living conditions of their populations, Ireland has invested heavily in its education and training system, with particular attention to equal access between boys and girls, to teaching of science and technology and innovations. We consider that all experiences on all continents can and should inspire us. Getting inspired does not mean copying and reproducing identically.
By choosing the theme of innovations brought by the private education sector and non-governmental organizations, we wanted to encourage knowledge sharing between private schools which have more flexibility in their educational approaches, in their way of passing on knowledge, know-how and interpersonal skills and the public sector which welcomes the largest number of schoolchildren, pupils and students.
The place of digital technology, the necessary changes in the way of teaching children of the current generation, the implications of the development of artificial intelligence, the precarious teaching conditions in rural areas and even in neighborhoods of a city like Dakar, all this was discussed during the discussions…
Absolutely, fascinating exchanges thanks to the experience and commitment of our guests who shared their concerns about the far too slow pace of change in the Senegalese education system in the context of an extremely young country, and the observation of an unpreparedness of a majority of young graduates for the demands of the job market and entrepreneurship worthy of the name.
Yasmine Sy, Academic Director of the SupDeco Dakar group, a business school, Sandrine Lemare who directs the Soft Skills Academy of the Higher Institute of Management (ISM), stressed the need to give more importance to these soft transversal skills which Young people greatly lack knowledge of themselves, their culture and their environment, curiosity, creativity, commitment to the community…
It is obvious that private groups, particularly at the higher level, have much more means to introduce innovations than public establishments. But here too, it is not a question of copying and replicating but of drawing inspiration from what is promising in a given space to imagine more frugal solutions in a broader space, that of public education.
We must not lose sight of major challenges such as the control and regulation of private schools and the still very precarious material conditions of many public and even private establishments…
Quite. Mamadou Cissé, who chairs the National Union of Secular Private Schools of Senegal, testified to the lack of effective control of the quality of learning in private establishments, outside of higher education. The more than 5,000 duly registered private schools are very rarely controlled by national education inspectors, who are largely insufficient in number. Hundreds of private schools also have no legal existence and administer national exams to their students under the guise of registered schools.
Abdou Sarr, trainer within AREDAssociates in Research and Education for Development, an NGO which has developed recognized expertise in the introduction of Senegalese national languages into the education system, through the production of adapted textbooks, insisted on the necessary and legitimate involvement of all categories of society, in the definition of the type of school that we want for the country. This is precisely the objective that we are pursuing by organizing this type of meeting.
► To go further
– Senegal: call for synergy to reform the education system
– Private education in Senegal / With a low enrollment rate: More than 5,000 authorized establishments
– Strengthening and transformation of education systems in West Africa, dedicated page on the Wathi website
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