Study workshop on operational links between islamic and public schoolsAbidjan, May 9, 2008 – UNICEF will finance a workshop to launch a study of the operational links between Islamic and public schools, to be held on May 13 and 14 of this year. The aim is to ensure that children enrolled in informal educational facilities are given access to the basic educational curricula of public schools and effectively acquire the subject knowledge taught in official educational facilities. UNICEF Côte d’Ivoire estimates that more than one million children have dropped out of school as a consequence of the crisis situation. A vast number of children have been deprived of any opportunity to enroll and/or re-enroll in school. Girls form a particularly significant segment of the deprived population group. Most of these children have since enrolled in Islamic schools or madrasas. The main geographic zones concerned are the central, northern and western regions of the country. Thousands of children and adolescents are being schooled in informal, officially unregistered educational facilities, whose educational program does not cover the subjects and does not provide the capacities outlined by the official educational curricula. In effect, the children are “excluded” from the public education system. As a result, the education of these children is a major national concern if Millennium Development Goals 2 and 3, which target universal education, gender equality and self-reliance, are to be achieved. So far, however, national initiative has contributed very little to reaching the Millennium Objectives for education. The net school enrolment rate, which for the past 10 years has never been higher than 56%, has dropped to 55% due to the sociopolitical crisis. This means that little more than 1 out of 2 children in the 6 to 11 age group enters primary school. The reasons for this poor school enrolment are economic first of all, the cost of schooling being beyond the means of many families. They are also related to the life vision and/or the ideas about public schooling which prevail in certain communities. Some Muslim communities do not always recognize their educational reference values in the existing public school system, especially where young girls are concerned. Lastly, it must be noted that the public school system provides insufficient geographical coverage, thereby obliging parents to turn to alternative educational solutions (Islamic or community schools etc.), which frequently lack academic qualifications. Thus, management of informal education in Côte d’Ivoire, including unofficial educational facilities, must be reviewed at the institutional level. While one would expect all educational issues to be under the authority of the Ministry of Education, which is in charge of the National Action Plan for Education for All (Plan d’Action national Education pour Tous, PAN/EPT), in fact the facilities which provide informal education, namely the Islamic schools, may fall under a variety of institutional authorities or may simply not fall within a given institutional framework, as the case may be. Objectives of the UNICEF-funded workshop It is the workshop’s aim to:
* * * * About UNICEF
Stéphanie Vidal, Administrator Communication, UNICEF Côte d’Ivoire.
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