Social and Community Concerns

There is no lunch program here, which doesn’t pose a problem for the vast majority of students, as they simply walk home the few blocks to eat lunch with their families. In situations where the parents decided not to send them to the closest school but here instead, in hopes of a more quality education, not all of these students can make it all the way home for lunch – even more difficult for double utilization and double flux students who have a shorter lunch break. Other students forego lunch due to a situation of familial poverty, absentee parents, and various other socioeconomic difficulties, and too often come to school in the afternoon on an empty stomach.

“People prefer to help the rural areas,” Ndiaye explains, over the repetitive shouts of the Arabic class next door, “thinking that they face more problems than us in the urban centers. But they are wrong; we have problems, too.” Ndiaye has been working with the CODEC, the local pedagogical grouping, to set up a social commission, in order to first identify and then find ways to support children in difficult situations. He has already signaled, or learned from others, certain serious cases involving students that deserve attention, including a latchkey child with troublesome friends, a girl with mental issues who is not receiving the proper care, and the handful of students whose afternoon attention span and energy suffers from not having eaten lunch.

Being based in an urban center, Cheikh Mbaba Sow sees less cases of children without birth certificates, but it does have its fair share of parents who, with what they gain from their artisanal and commercial activities, cannot pay for the enrolment fees, or cannot purchase the necessary supplies for their children, from pens to books. Given that a part of the enrolment fees goes to cover the regular expenses of the school – water, electricity, a guard – late or non-existent fees put the school’s daily operations in danger. The school’s only recourse is to send the child home, as a “threat” to the parent to pay the fees, but such a measure is only temporary, rarely employed, and very rarely successful in obtaining the missing fees.

In addition, as a larger school with lots of traffic – not only from students, but from visitors on their way back from meetings at the Inspection next door – hygiene is a primary concern for the school. With the recent announcement of H1N1 arriving in Senegal, the director has requested more cleaning supplies. Without running water in the bathrooms, the school has a water basin they fill for washing hands. In addition, it is not easy to provide potable drinking water, uncontaminated by busy little hands, to the children. This means having drinking buckets, with bleach-treated water, and a cup in each classroom, although the unique cup is still shared throughout the group. So, recently, the staff has been encouraging parents even more to send their children to school with individual water thermoses.

Generally, challenges such as sensitizing parents, improving hygiene measures, collecting late fees, and exploring for additional funds to support the school would be taken up by the APE, the Association des Parent’s d’Elèves, similar to a Parent Teacher Association but with fiscal responsibilities and rights in the school. Regrettably, history has shown that the APE of Cheikh Mbaba Sow is too often focused on power struggles and political statements than it is on supporting the school. According to the director, the board members hold significant power in the community but do not want to act in favor of the school, leaving him searching for a strategy to work around them without displacing them. He’s still trying to narrow down the appropriate strategy, all the while lamenting the weak ties between his institution and the neighborhood surrounding it.

Welcome to Ecole Primaire Cheikh Mbaba Sow!

You enter through a small opening in the cement wall that surrounds the structure, just past the Inspection de l’Enseignement Primaire (IEP), the departmental head of elementary education. Once through the opening, most of the sounds and smells of this city center fade – the beeps and squeals, the shouts of ambulant vendors, the smog from the constant line of cars shuffling through this tourist and trader destination’s narrow main road.

There’s the school director’s office and the storage room/library right next to the entrance. Past that, the vast courtyard is dotted with ancient leafy trees and lined with blocks of faded yellow classrooms. At 8h05, the children were in their classrooms and the school director in his office, a punctual start to the day.

Of course, this has been the routine for the past 55 years, since the school’s pre-independence creation in 1955. Then, and for the 9 years following, it was a 4-classroom public school for girls, run by Mme Caroline Diop Faye (who later became the first woman Deputy at the National Assembly); the boy’s school was next door. Basic infrastructure has been in place since early on, with the latrines dating back to the 1960s, and water and electricity having been installed a little later. Today, this structure is a mixed public school, as are the ten or so elementary, middle, and high schools, all within a few blocks. M. Ndiaga Ndiaye arrived as the new director in 2007.

Comparatively, the school’s staffing and structure are rather impressive. There is the school director, a rotating substitute teacher, 2 Arabic teachers, and 11 “chalk-in-hand” active teachers for 11 classes of children. There should be more than enough space for the students in the 12 physical classrooms – but, in reality, there are only 10, and with a total of more than 600 students, 11 active teachers no longer seems sufficient. The lack of space means that certain students must trade off for the use of the classroom, in a system called double utilsation, as is the case of CM1, the first year of cours moyen (the 5th year of elementary school). Mr Diop and his students come on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and Madame Kane and her students on Tuesday and Thursday, with Saturdays rotating between the two. A lack of teachers has led to the adoption of the double flux system for CE2, the second year of cours elementaire (4th grade), the result of having only one teacher assigned for 100 students in that grade level. The double flux system is similar to that of double utilisation, with the exception that both groups are taught by the same teacher, an exhausting task this year for Mr. Kane. Results of these adaptations? While an average student receives 29 hours of instruction per week, double utilisation and double flux classrooms only have 20 hours per week, the lack of instruction being clearly reflected in constantly lower-than-average test scores.

And Ndiaye recognizes that, despite these less-than-perfect conditions, some parents are keen to enroll their children in his school because of the number of experienced teachers. In this school that often welcomes interns and observers, the majority of its permanent teaching staff is made up of tenured teachers who have completed at least 5 years and passed a teaching exam in elementary school instruction. With experience closely related to successful teaching and student results, for many parents, they will do what they can to send their children to Cheikh Mbaba Sow, even if that means paying for transportation to and from the school or expecting their children to go without lunch twice a week.

Progress and the Future

And yet, progress in this challenging environment continues to push forward. From 20-some students in 2000 to over 200 today, the school continues to grow. Ndour himself points out that, in comparison to schools built right after independence in 1960 and who still only have 3 or 4 classrooms, the Ecole Sinthiou Mbadane 1 has been very lucky. It has a relatively small average class size (around 36, compared to a national average of closer to 60), enough classrooms in which to teach, and only one split-level class currently. It also offers the entire 6-year elementary cycle, making it much easier for parents to continue to send their children to school – instead of trying to send them away to another village to study – and much more likely that the students will be able to receive a primary diploma. It has encouraging results on national tests; incredibly, 100% of students passed the primary school graduation test.

And, it has a future. Four members of its first graduating class, two girls and two boys, are preparing for the BFEM this year, the middle school graduation test, at the Zone Sud middle school about 4 km away. (The very creation of this school in a near location was thanks to more lobbying on the part of Sinthiou Mbadane, and a loan of their own classroom materials that are only now, 5 years later, being returned.) As the director and I continue to discuss the future of the community, we see a group of 6 girls, their matching middle school smocks proudly marking them as students, making their way through the fields back home, to Sinthiou Mbadane.

Obstacles to Education

Still, one must recognize that this community, that has made so much progress in accepting and supporting formal education, continues to face obstacles, mainly in relation to their own cultural realities. For example, the villagers must compete more and more with parents from the urban fringe who are looking to enroll their children in the school. The urban advantage? These parents are in conformity with the requirements for enrolment as, unlike their rural counterparts, they are able to produce a birth certificate attesting to the legal identity and age of their children.

The parents of Sinthiou Mbadane, on the other hand, often welcomed their children into the world at home, or at a local health center, and never went through the process necessary to obtain a birth certificate. Now, if they want to claim the limited amounts of spots at the school for their children, they must go through a longer, more expensive process of an audience foraine to obtain proof of age certificates. The time and funds, and even the involvement of the director to vouch for the child’s age, is too constraining for many parents. Some fathers were recently spotted leaving their herds mid-day to collect and then sell firewood, all in hopes of being able to pay the 2,000fcfa (~USD5) for the process. While the director has had to make some tough decisions – in the beginning of this school year, he had the village choose which 60 out of the 100 students on the enrolment list would be able to attend – he does believe that, in the long run, strongly encouraging that parents get birth certificates for each child, which will then be their key to passing national exams, voting, applying for loans, and so many other advantages.

In the past few months, out of the roughly 60% of the students who did not have birth certificates, half have now obtained them, thanks to the audiences foraines and a great deal of support from their parents and the school director. Yet, even when – or if – the remaining children receive theirs, the battle is not over. During the first few years after the school became functional, there were more than 20 girls who left their studies to go start a family. In traditional Pulaar settings, giving girls in marriage at 10, 11, and 12 years of age is rather common and, once married, these girls are then expected to stay at home, tend to the chores, and have children.

While the number of girls leaving school for this reason has significantly reduced, girls’ education continues to be a challenge. Many of the girls who were part of these first groups to marry and leave school are often asked to give testimony to the importance of schooling. They explain to families who want to withdraw their girls that “if I could do it again, I’d stay in school” and “I really wish I had more of an education.” The women teachers association for girls empowerment, SCOFI (scolarisation des filles) has also been called in on occasion to discuss with families the importance of education for girls. After all these efforts, success is starting to become apparent in the numbers: out of the 48 students in their first year of school, CI, 31 of them are girls.

Particular, though, to the Pulaar community is the necessity to promote boys’ education as well. In this majority herding community, families need boys to take the cows out to graze – a task that is requiring further and longer trips as local grazing land is being sold by the government and exploited as farms or construction sites. There have been “mobile school” projects in other areas in the past that attempted to follow herding boys in order to provide them with an education – but, according to the school director, these projects have failed, rejected by the communities as out of place and unnecessary.

The movement of the parents themselves is another challenge facing the communities. Girls keep house, boys follow cows, and mothers and fathers move in rhythm with the weekly markets in order to sell milk and meat. Thus, parents are away from the household for almost all of the waking hours of the day, if not longer. Their involvement, then, in their children’s schoolwork and in any activities supporting the school is very limited.

The School's Birth and Growth

It all started in a neighboring village where, one afternoon, a wandering French woman met a small girl of the village, who brought her to the girl’s uncle. The woman asked the uncle, “What would you like us to do to help you?” And, he responded, “We would like to have a school,” and thus began the literacy school, supported by the French woman with the help of an association. The literacy school lasted two years.

But something had awoken in the village about the importance of an education, and the village was ready to act for themselves. They formed a committee to visit the education inspector in the city and demand a school; in response, in November of 2000, M. Ndour arrived in Sinthiou Mbadane as the school director and teacher of the cours d’initiation, or CI, the first year of school. With him, came order and formality – students were expected to arrive to school on time and to be present regularly – and the sounds of the French language. (Growing up speaking only Pulaar, many children had enormous pronunciation difficulties in French.)

In 2001, a request from two neighboring villages for a school, where there was only an unused école communautaire de base, was responded by the regional Inspecteur (like an area superintendent) with a simple “send them to Sinthiou Mbadane’s school.” Ndour, however, could not accept so easily that two more villages would send him students without the necessary space or teachers being provided to accommodate them. And he made that very clear to the Inspecteur! Still, unable to turn down students, he taught a split level class of CI and CP, the cours préparatoire that year

The following year, Ndour prepared to teach CP and CE1, the first-level cours elémentaire, and M. Ka was sent to the school to teach a rotating class of CI students. What a fortuitous and exceptional gift he was! Ka, in fact, was raised in a family where formal education was not prized, even looked down on; throughout his youth, Ka’s father battled against the wishes of the family in order to continue to send him and his brothers to school. Now, teacher, Ka found himself in a conservative, traditional Pulaar community that, just as his family had, continues to struggle with the importance of allowing their children a formal education. Propped up by his own life story, Ka’s awareness-raising efforts with his new Pulaar neighbors resulted in an enormous growth in the school’s population as they enrolled more and more of their children.

The physical structure was also growing – having taught in a provisory structure for the first two years, finally three concrete classrooms were built in 2003, thanks to the help of a German couple that was put in contact with the school. In 2007, the government paid for the construction of another 2 classrooms, and the 6th classroom was built halfway by a French association in 2007/2008; the final touches, and the furniture, was completed little by little with the help of the teachers and parents’ contributions, and the occasional donor who, in hearing of the school’s predicament, would give a table-banc or two.

The teaching staff continued to grow as well, with M. Badiane and M. Cissé being sent to Sinthiou Mbadane in 2005, allowing for a full 6-year elementary cycle at the school, but requiring that each teacher take on split-level classes. This situation was unbearable for the staff, as they themselves were conscient of the reduced teaching hours and support, and thus lower success rates, of students in such classes. With encouragement from the teaching staff, Ndour stepped forward to teach a class as well – in addition to his responsibilities as school director. Ever since, evolving situations have never allowed for him to leave the classroom, even this year as one of their teachers was sent to teach elsewhere, without a replacement teacher being provided.

Complementary and infrastructure and side projects have developed alongside the classrooms and the staff size. A school lunch program was started in 2003 by a French artist who funded the program with proceeds from his painting sales. With the crisis of the past few years, he has all but stopped his contributions, but the school’s staff worked quickly to find another supporter. They understand that, although enrolment doubled when the program was started, without it, many students would either go hungry all afternoon or would not even come to school at all. There are two latrines on the edge of the courtyard, and a well was built a few years ago as well, along with a vegetable and fruit tree garden that is maintained by the school guard. Recently, a French woman gave a solar system to the school, allowing them to have electricity for evening revisions and to charge batteries for electronic devices.

Welcome to Ecole Primaire Sinthiou Mbadane 1!

Fighting through the smog and traffic of peripheral Dakar, I set out on Monday afternoon to go spend some time with the teachers and students at Sinthiou Mbadane. The plan was to leave very early on Tuesday in order to be a part of the entire school day; unfortunately, plans never go exactly as one hopes here in Senegal, West Africa. The taxi driver who was to bring me to this rural school didn’t show up – not at 7h30, not at 8h00, not at 9h00, and still not at 10h00. So, with a quick call to Mounirou, the “head of public relations” at the school, I engaged another driver and we were on our way in minutes.

Of course, being on your way and arriving are two very different accomplishments! I began to wonder if we’d ever achieve the second as I stood next to the beat-up car, stuck for the second time in the sand, and watched horse and donkey-carts fly by with their passengers as a group of men continued to dig sand out from under the tires and then push with manly grunts. Maybe I should ask about a donkey cart for next time?, I thought.

But, soon enough, the driver had dropped me off in the courtyard of Sinthiou Mbadane 1, where Mounirou was waiting eagerly.

“I thought you’d never make it!” he exclaimed. I hadn’t been too sure myself, I confided to him.

The visit, as any visit in Senegal, started with rounds of greetings. We walked together to greet the teachers in their classrooms, often interrupting their lessons, tentatively peeking in until the teacher noticed us and loudly announced that we should enter. And then, the ritual standing of the children and shouted choral greetings of “Bonjour Madame! Bonjour Monsieur!” followed by a decisive thud as 60 pairs of young cheeks sat back down on their respective benches in unison.

Oddly enough, the school director was missing from the scene. Just as I was about to ask for an explanation, the small, puttering rumble of a mobilette grew louder, and the director made his entrance on top of it. He parked in front of the school kitchen, a small cemented space a few feet from the end classroom, and began to unload vegetables from the back, front, and even underside of his bike.

“Sorry I’m late!” he called to me. “I had to go to the market!”

This scene is atypical anywhere, yes; a school director missing on a Tuesday morning, then riding in on his mobilette, and then explaining that he was on a market run for the cafeteria. The explanation, however, was truly one of a kind. Since its creation about 5 years ago, the school lunch program had never missed a day, not a single day, where the students were not provided lunch – until yesterday, when a funeral in the neighboring village occupied the entire village – including the lunch crew, composed of 10 women rotating 2 at a time – and emptied the small local market of any produce or fish. Today, though, the director was determined to not let that situation repeat. He had found two women from a village on the opposite side of the school, and was obligated to take the only easily available means of transport, his mobilette, into town to pick up the lunch supplies at the market, a truly female-dominated scene.

Exceptional, the dedication of this school director, but so too are his staff and students. And, in fact, just as exceptional is the story of the school, which I learned from the director - when he had finished un-wedging carrots from between the exhaust pipe and seat.

Welcome to the 21st Century Learning Initiative's Blog!

Here is where we will be updating you on the exciting things happening in the classrooms involved in this project!