Push on pupil numbers drives down quality

Mauritania is on track to reach the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of enrolling all children in primary school, but government officials told IRIN education quality has plummeted.

"We have children in the sixth class who cannot read or write,” said Abderrahmane Mohamed Sidina, director of national education in Gorgol region, southern Mauritania, which covers 317 schools.

“Our schools have no books, no materials, and few teachers. Schools are not [creating] an environment that is conducive to learning."

Sidina blames the push to raise school attendance for the very large class sizes, inadequate teacher numbers and dilapidated equipment.

"Mauritania may well attain universal primary education but the quality is getting worse,” agreed Khadij Mohamed Salem, education project officer at the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Nouakchott. “You cannot lower quality… just for the sake of numbers."

Mauritania’s government made universal primary education a priority in 1990 and according to the UN MDG November 2007 progress report, 72 percent of children are currently enrolled. Just over half of those children stay in school until grade five, the report said.

M'beida village school

In the primary school in M'beida village, 25km from Keidi in southern Mauritania, only one of the four classrooms has desks and chairs and there is next to no teaching equipment.

"UNICEF provided books and pens in November 2007, but we already need more, and we have no teaching guides" said Daba Hamadi, the school director.

The school has four teachers to instruct 255 children, with average class sizes of 60. "We are trying to hire more teachers but we cannot find them because they simply don't exist," Hamadi told IRIN. "I am starting to turn children away."

Bilingual schools

In 2006 the government set up bilingual schools to try to break down the division between government schools which had French instruction and Koranic schools which taught in Arabic.

Photo: Nicholas Reader/IRIN

Typical settlement in rural Mauritania. Primary education got a boost from the MDGs but quality is said to be falling

But because of lack of teacher training to accompany it, there are no bilingual teachers to work in them, said Salem.

In Hamadi's school, which is supposedly bilingual, just one of the four teachers speaks French and Arabic.

Investment

"Inadequate investment over the years made it difficult for the education department to attract good teachers to the profession and train them properly," Sidina told IRIN.

Hamadi earns US$250 a year after 20 years of service, and even that salary comes in irregularly, he complained.

The money that there was, was unequally distributed across districts, said Gorgol region’s education officer Sidina. "Funding was politically driven and unequal. We are trying to change this."

However, investment appears to be going up. Education received 8.2 percent of the government's 2005 budget, rising to 14 percent in 2007 and further rises to 20 percent are expected over the next few years, according to UNICEF.

US$1.2 million has already been set aside for 2008, Sidina said, to give teachers incentives of US$23 when they join the profession and a US$60 per year “chalk incentive” to reward performance.

"Our top three priorities for education in Mauritania are to improve quality, retain more students right through to grade five, and train teachers," Sidina said, but urged patience among teachers and students. "We will not see instant results, it will take up to two years to see widespread change."

It will be an uphill struggle, he said. "There is never enough money for education, to make all the improvements that we need, so the money will never go far enough."

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