Challenges

In recent years, the Sahel region has been facing insecurity related to terrorism, political turmoil and internal or cross-border population displacement that undermines the social cohesion of local communities. The effects of climate change, with less predictable rains and more powerful storms, floods and droughts for months at a time, are also affecting thousands among the local populations. Recurring social tensions around access to natural resources (water, pasture and land) compound existing vulnerabilities.

The region has some of the worst indicators pertaining to education, with over 10.5 million children out of school. The increasing school-age population translates into increasing demands on education resources. Current data from the UNESCO Institute of Statistics (UIS) also demonstrate a wide gap between the number of trained teachers and the school-age population. The lack of trained teachers is a major challenge, with, for example in Mali, only 5.4 per cent of primary school teachers qualified. In Chad, only 24.4 per cent of primary school teachers are trained, while in Niger only 9.5 per cent and 13 per cent of, respectively, first cycle and second cycle secondary education teachers have received training. Despite the fact that there are disparities of context between countries, a regional approach provides a framework that can be adapted to the local context and needs, while operating from a human-rights based approach and ensuring fulfilment of global and regional conventions, and at the same time ensuring equitable access to primary and post-primary quality education for all children of these five Sahelian countries.

Toward a Solution

The Strengthening Teaching in the Sahel Region project aims to improve learning outcomes for all students of compulsory school age in the G5 Sahel countries – Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger. To achieve this objective, the project focuses on improving the governance and management of teachers and improving the relevance of their initial and in-service training. The project also aims to improve gender equality in the teaching profession and to integrate gender-sensitive approaches into teaching practices. Actions are targeted and reflect the specific context and needs of each country.

The project has two components:

• technical and financial support at national and regional level (Sahel region) to improve teacher governance and management policies, which will be implemented in all five countries; and
• technical and financial support at national level to improve pre-service and in-service teacher training, which will be implemented in three countries where circumstances (existing, needs, time frame, consistency with other ongoing reforms) require project support. 

In order to strengthen and improve the quality of teaching, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has built upon work that took place years ago, in collaboration with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) to develop a common curriculum framework for teachers in the five Sahel countries targeted by the initiative.

The project places great emphasis on the availability of appropriate standards for the professionalization of teachers. The project’s ambition in this regard is to build on the previous work of UNESCO and various partners on the establishment of a common framework for the ECOWAS and the ECCAS countries, in order to provide the target countries with a reference document for the development or revision of their curricular orientation framework relating to the professionalization of basic education teachers. A common framework ensures a certain consistency in training, not only within each of the states but also between these states, so that a level of mobility of teachers between regions and between states is possible. 

With technical support from UNESCO and UNESCO’s International Bureau for Education (IBE), each country prepared an analytical paper aimed at understanding the characteristics of national curriculum frameworks for teachers. UNESCO and IBE then prepared an analysis of the different teacher curriculum frameworks and proposed a Common Curriculum Framework for Teacher professionalization for all countries. This draft framework was then supplemented by the contributions of each country through the task teams appointed to work on the initiative and finally validated at the Regional Workshop of Niamey in October 2022. 

The framework officially adopted by all five countries provides them with a common reference to strengthen the quality of teaching and the preparation of teachers. The Common Teachers’ Curriculum Framework is intended to guide countries to adopt reforms of the teaching profession’s norms and establish minimum standards for pre-service teacher training across the five countries. Similar mechanisms exist in other regions and sub-regions of the world, but this was the first time these Sahel countries came up with a commonly built tool, through South-South cooperation and exchange, in order to improve the quality of education.

Following the Niamey adoption of the Common Teachers’ Curriculum Framework, countries will develop national road maps to strengthen their national teacher curriculum. This new phase is again led by countries and will be technically and financially supported by UNESCO, IBE and other development partners between 2023 and 2025. The adoption of a Common Orientation Framework for the professionalization of teachers was perceived by countries as an initiative positioned at the crossroads of the pedagogical paths of the five Sahelian countries. These countries share a common will to provide their respective education systems with professional standards in the recruitment and training of basic education teachers.

Through this concerted action in defining their vision of educational policy, Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Chad have chosen to drive a process of educational transformation first and foremost by strengthening the responsibilities of the teacher, but also their status within the broader framework of the governance of their respective education systems. In this regard, the challenge for the future lies in the implementation within each of the countries concerned, but also in the Sahel and the development of national road maps.