Middle School Matters: Engaging Communities in Senegal to Support Education for All Children
A decade ago, middle school enrollment in Senegal hovered at less than a quarter of eligible students. A severe lack of middle schools—particularly in rural areas—contributed to the country’s dismal rate of secondary education. To compound the matter, demand for middle schools in rural areas remained low; many parents could not see the relevance of such education for their children, especially their daughters.
In recent years, efforts by the government of Senegal to improve access to education have boosted primary school enrollment. Now those children are ready to move on to middle school, but the limited number of schools, coupled with community resistance in some areas, continues to inhibit their attendance.
RTI has been working since 2003 as a subcontractor to the Academy for Educational Development (AED) to assist Senegal’s Ministry of Education in increasing the number and quality of middle schools in rural areas, as well as improving girls’ enrollment rates. This U.S. Agency for International Development-funded Projet d’Appui á l’Enseignement Moyen (USAID/PAEM) works in nearly 60 villages across four of Senegal’s poorest and most rural regions: Fatick, Tambacounda, Kolda, and Zinguinchour. In these areas, girls’ enrollment in middle school has more than doubled since the project began.
During the early years of the project, RTI helped the government formulate and implement school decentralization policies. Since 2007, RTI has also focused on mobilizing communities to construct, manage, and support neighborhood middle schools.
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| A group of men strategizing at a USAID/PAEM community mobilization workshop. [Photo: USAID/PAEM staff] |
Supporting Decentralization Management
In 2003, RTI began collaborating with the Ministry of Education’s Department of Middle and Secondary Education to help clarify policy, roles, and operational strengths and weaknesses across structures and levels of the education system in the context of the government’s new strategy for improving educational access, quality, and management.
As the project helped facilitate the construction of 58 neighborhood middle schools, RTI assisted in building national, regional, and local capacities to support new school communities in understanding and sustainably implementing the government’s education strategy. For example, officials from project-supported schools are now positioned to make more effective school management decisions because they understand how to inform those decisions with essential information, such as student performance assessments. More than half the project-supported schools now regularly engage the public in forums to present school performance information and annual budget reviews, drawing high community attendance.
“These forums make schools accountable to their communities, which spurs solid performance and builds trust within the communities,” said Oumar Diong, USAID/PAEM National Coordinator for Management.
At the local level, school management committees (SMCs)—composed of parents, principals, teachers, students, youths, and women’s association representatives—take responsibility for much of the school development planning and maintenance. RTI ran five workshops—with total attendance of more than 400 SMC members—which discussed goals and objectives of the government’s education strategy, middle school management concepts, the school development planning process, and school maintenance organization and practice. SMC representatives also participated in training on the implementation of school improvement plans. Today, all project-supported schools have functional SMCs.
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| Women from the school community help run day camps for the children during school vacation. [Photo: USAID/PAEM staff] |
Improving the Ability of Communities to Support Their Children’s Education
In rural Senegal, where many neighborhoods now have their first middle schools, community engagement is crucial to school sustainability and success. RTI is mobilizing communities to support schools in a number of ways.
“The project helps communities understand the benefits of sending their children to middle school—that their children will gain skills necessary to seek further education or professional opportunities that would otherwise be unavailable to them,” said Rokhaya Thioune, USAID/PAEM Community Mobilization Coordinator. “It also builds awareness that communities have a responsibility to support and oversee the schools.”
To effectively reach new school communities, the project assembled a 40-person team—consisting of government, nongovernmental organization, and civil society representatives—to carry out mobilization activities. These activities have reached more than 3,000 people from several target groups, including parent-teacher associations, students, opinion leaders, local authorities, youths, and women’s associations.
“I am illiterate, but since the school construction, I never miss a meeting of the SMC,” said a mother from a women’s association in Ndindifelo. “Participating in the meetings has really opened my eyes to my daily responsibilities and the benefits schooling provides for my children. Every day, I make sure the kids are awake early, are properly dressed, have their breakfast, and are not late to school.”
Cultural views on the role of women, as well as the long distances students once had to travel to attend the nearest middle school, have historically prevented girls from gaining education past primary school. The project works to inform parents and broader communities of the value of education not only for their sons, but also for their daughters.
The project has developed awareness campaigns highlighting the negative consequences of early marriage and pregnancy for the education and health of young girls. These campaigns have opened discussion about these once-taboo topics. In addition, the campaigns discuss the necessity of homework and encourage parents to lessen the domestic workload on their daughters to allow them time to study. Some middle schools have noted that the incidence of student pregnancy has decreased by up to one-third since the awareness campaigns began, and that parents are more willing to enroll their daughters and better understand the intensity of their children’s studies.
“These 58 communities now possess the school facilities, management techniques, and awareness to offer their children a stronger educational foundation than ever before,” Diong said.
The contents of this article are the responsibility of RTI and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.
e-mail odiong@paem.rti.org