Peer reviews continue in Burkina Faso and Congo

The Working Group on Non-Formal Education  (WGNFE) participated in two field missions in July 2014, in Burkina Faso and Congo Brazzaville, as part of the peer reviews conducted by ADEA, Korea and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

In Burkina Faso, the review focused on “improving the quality of basic education, in line with the country’s strategic choices”. In particular, it addresses questions related to the coherence of the national curriculum under development, to the linkages to be established by formal and non-formal education in order to build a unified basic education system, and to the integration of pre-vocational training in the new curriculum. In Congo, the review examined the training of primary-level teachers and supervisors and the country’s achievements with respect to the Education for All (EFA) goals and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

During these two missions, the international peer reviewers met with their national counterparts in order to collect additional information and to discuss, among colleagues, the observations and recommendations that the national reviewers had made in their self-evaluation reports. The international peers also met some instructors and supervisors of literacy training centers, managers of local and province-level education departments, instructors in formal and non-formal basic education centers, and senior officials of teacher colleges and pedagogical research institutes.

These meetings led to a clearer understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing the education systems in Burkina Faso and Congo and to proposals for practical solutions to the problems identified. One of the most significant challenges is the difficulty encountered in taking non-formal education into consideration in the process of rethinking education from the ground up, in order to make the education system coherent with training, the job market and new technologies. These systems also have difficulty in establishing the link between African realities and the curriculum and, at the same time, in focusing on disadvantaged groups, those left out of the formal system– in short, those who must be reached before one can speak of education “for all”.

The two missions provided the opportunity to discuss the challenges, to reflect on ways and means of capitalizing on opportunities, and to propose solutions “that work”. At the end of the peer review process, “realistic and achievable” recommendations will be formulated, discussed, validated and disseminated in the autumn of 2014.

For further information, visit the website www.gtenf.org or contact Ibrahima Bah Lalya, Coordinator, ADEA Working Group on Non-Formal Education (WGNFE), lalyabah2@yahoo.com.