Burkina Faso calls on ADEA to conduct a peer review exercise

Published on Monday, 3 March 2014

The ADEA Working Group on Non-Formal Education (WGNFE) and the Burkina Ministry of Education and Literacy (MENA) held a workshop in Ouagadougou, February 17-20, 2014, to settle the details of the peer review that ADEA is to help conduct in Burkina Faso.

The official launch of the workshop was given by the Hon. Koumba Boly-Barry, Minister of Education and Literacy of Burkina Faso. The meeting was attended by senior MENA officials, the WGNFE coordinator, the lead consultant who is to coordinate the international peer review team, and representatives of education partners at the decentralized, local level.

The workshop specified the theme of the peer review: improving the quality of basic education, in connection with the strategic choices of the country’s three most recent educational reforms: the Strategic Development of Basic Education Program (PDSEB) and the “Decentralization” and “Continuum” approaches. The Continuum approach takes a broad view of basic education as extending beyond the primary level to middle school. This reform seeks to unify pre-primary, primary and junior secondary education in a single curriculum, thus putting this extended vision of basic education into practice.

The peer review will give particular attention to:
- verifying that the curriculum is consistent with the stated principles of the reform, the content, feasibility and practices on the ground;
- ways and means to be implemented to link the formal and non-formal curricula together in order to build a unified system of basic education;
- integration of pre-vocational training in basic education.

Among other things, the peer review should explore: the relevance of the PDSEB approach to the socio-economic needs and employability of young people; covering disadvantaged groups that have resisted EFA programs; the linkage between formal and non-formal education; the consolidation of non-formal educational approaches.

According to the new road map for the peer review, the country’s internal diagnosis should be completed by April 14, 2014.

WGNFE is also conducting a peer review exercise in Congo (Brazzaville). The first phase of the review (self-evaluation) has just been completed and will be reported on in the April ADEA News Briefs.  

For further information, please contact Ibrahima Bah-Lalya, WGNFE coordinator, e-mail: gtenf@fasonet.bf