A glance on Niger educational System

Without being a specialist of education, I am worrying about Niger education system which has been recently jeopardized by a scandal of traffic of high school diplomas. As single citizen, I feel myself deeply concerned about the matter. So the opinion expressed here is personal.

My current interest is related to the formal national Education System. The main objective is to provide professionals for, both public administrations as civil servants and private sector. Despite the efforts made by Niger Government and the Donors, there is still a lack of human ressources. Therefore the mission of Niger education system is far from being fulfilled. Niger’s literacy rate is estimated at 52%, meaning that we have 48 children over 100 who are not attending school. More over, the adult literacy rate is only 30%. This situation shows us the level of the challenge we have to face for achieving a real national capacity building in this sector.

Added to this weak capacity, a question remains: the quality of knowledge acquired in this system. In fact, since a decade, the quality of the schooling is under discussion. The issue is that most of the primary, secondary and high school students do not have or are not getting enough knowledge before moving further. Worst, the majority of primary students can not even read, and those who can barely read don’t understand the meaning of what they read. The reasons of this low quality of Niger national education system are multiples; among which we can name the following: · Bad training skills of teachers; · Lack of motivation of teachers ( bad career perspectives ,salary paid irregularly or late), · Schools with lack of equipment and a lack of furniture and supplies; · Overcrowded classes; · Lack of parental responsibility (most of them do not want to send their children to school especially the daughters and do not also want to invest in education, some do not have the means, students do not work at, nor at home, they do not respect teachers, they are all over the year over strikes and demonstrations claiming better learning environment); · No direct link between the education system and the jobs market; · The whole system is corrupted. (Most of civil servants, up to the Minister, working at Ministry of Basic Education have been involved in embezzlement. An audit just proved it and most of them, including two members of government who have been successively in charge of this department were fired).

Following the scandal of traffic of high school diplomas, several teachers who sell the marks for getting grads and diplomas, were fired this year. But what about the parents and students who bring the means of corruption?
Traditionally, to be cached cheating is considered as a big shame for Niger students. Nowadays students are proud to announce that they got the stream, meaning that they cheat.

However this year (June 2006), due to the measures taken by authorities, the level of corruption during the exams, is very weak. As the quality of the education system remains low, the results were very bad: 11% of success in some areas.

There is a beginning of solution, but a general commitment of all levels and stakeholders of the system, is needed to succeed to build capacity that could lead to the development of a sustainable and efficient education system in Niger. Otherwise, Niger will miss the millennium Development goals in this sector which is prior and leads all other developments (economic, social…) and fight for poverty reduction.

Abdou ADAMOU AFTRM/WB CO Niger