Inégalités dans le domaine de l’éducation

This study will attempt to highlight sex-related disparities in education. In other words, it will seek to describe the difference between girls’ and boys’ school enrolment in Chad, and identify some of the reasons for that difference. The 2009 census found that 1,724,837 children were enrolled in primary school, including 1,008,132 boys (i.e., 58.4%) and 716,705 girls (i.e., 41.6%). The gross primary school enrolment ratios were 75% for boys and 61.4% for girls (urban areas: 105.5% vs. 93%; rural areas: 67.7% vs. 53.6%). The gender parity index (82 girls for every 100 boys) shows that, compared with boys, girls are considerably disadvantaged when it comes to school enrolment. These sex disparities in school enrolment raise the broader issue of gender relations within the family, as well as within society at large. Chad still has a very long way to go to achieving the slogan “School for All”. Girls are extremely marginalized when it comes to gaining access to education and training. Mentalities and detrimental traditional practices are chiefly to blame.

- Before the country's new school system in 1976, Benin was using the colonial school system and achieving performances that earned it the nickname of "Africa's Latin Quarter". The education reforms, introduced by intellectuals entirely produced by the now defunct old school system, has not enjoyed the same success. And yet they were intended to foster a national development underpinned by technological development that the colonial school system would not have produced. Since then, the low baccalauréat pass rates, especially with the technical baccalauréats (E, F and G streams) that were supposed to generate that technological development, have alarmed everyone. The education authorities even predict the programmed death of the technical streams in Benin's education system. Is the emergence of these series being held back, e.g. by endogenous resistance, following a drop in the system's internal performance? Is the politicians' declared disaffection with these streams an effect of the learners' behaviour or of the players' performance? Is this persistent low pass rate structural or the result of a situation that could be improved by appropriate changes of direction? What lessons are to be drawn from the main findings? This first study of the issue examines the trend in technical baccalauréat pass rates in Benin from the standpoint of social change.

- Since the creation of the first teacher training school for primary teachers in 1988, two years of professional training had been offered and primary teachers were recruited by competition from holders of the BEPC junior secondary school diploma. A reform in 2003 cut the duration of training from two years to one, with the programmes and quality requirement almost unchanged. The reason was not so much technical or professional, but to quickly send a large number of teachers into the field to meet the goals set for 2010 under the Ten-Year Plan for Basic Education (2001-2010): to achieve a school attendance rate of 70% and a literacy rate of 40% by 2010. This teacher training system raises questions as to the impact on teaching quality. The most immediate consequences are that the professional training is of poor quality and the new teachers' initiation into the educational world and school life is superficial. This research aims to reveal the explanatory factors for primary teaching quality from the data of the PASEC survey conducted during the 2006-2007 school year.

- Promoting poor people's access to basic education services is one of the main goals of the first phase of the ten-year basic education development plan (PDDEB) of 2001-2010. Ten years after implementation of the PDDEB began, it seems necessary to assess whether it has achieved its goal. This study uses the data from five surveys conducted by the National Institute of Statistics and Demography: the Priority Survey on Household Living Conditions (EP), 98, conducted two years before the PDDEB began and which will serve as our baseline; the Burkinabe Survey on Household Living Conditions (EBCVM), 2003; the Annual Surveys on Household Living Conditions (EA/QUIBB), 2005 and 2007, and the Integral Survey on Household Living Conditions (EICVM), 2009. For its methodology the survey uses the odds ratio, which in insensitive to variations over the generations in the distribution of social origins and access to education. It therefore provides a measure of inequality in access to education that is independent of structural changes and so allows us grasp inequalities in access to education according to social origin over the generations.

Today, many African countries are confronted with the combined effects of the economic crisis and climate change. In recent years, Niger has experienced cycles of drought and food crises that have modified the standard migration patterns in the country. Young boys are no longer the only ones to migrate, but also young girls who were destined for housework in their hometowns. The aim of this study is to shed light on the evolution of interactions between migration and nuptiality as regards the schooling of youth aged 7 to 18, depending on their sex. For this study, we shall use data from demographic and health surveys in Niger in 1992, 1998 and 2006 and from the national survey on migration (ENAMI) conducted in 2011. The analysis will be multivariate and use logistic regression on two levels (individual and household), then be completed by a decomposition analysis. At the end of this study, we shall be able to describe the evolution of migration patterns for youth aged 12-30, depending on their sex, through nuptiality and schooling, as well as the effects of various development policies on this migrant population over the past 20 years in Niger.