Burkina Faso : "literacy for the little ones" in Nomgana

IK Notes Burkina Faso: “Literacy for the Little Ones” in Nomgana omgana is the hub community of 1988 to create an instructional system N a very active inter-village federa- that would enable adults trained in lit- tion in the district of Loumbila, eracy centers to advance from written located 30 kilometers east of Mooré to learning spoken and written Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina French. Faso. A local association dubbed The program achieved a good deal of Manegbzanga (“Development for All” success and was soon faced with in- in the Mooré language) was created in creasing demand for enrollment from the region over a decade ago by the young people — children and adoles- joint efforts of emigrants returning cents — who had missed primary from neighboring Côte d’Ivoire and a schooling or had been forced to drop local person who had gone to work for out. The village literacy committee de- the Swiss NGO, Organisme Suisse cided at last to accept the challenge of d’Entraide Ouvrière (OSEO). In recent creating a program of “literacy for the years, the association has launched an little ones” (alphabétisation des tout experimental program using Mooré petits). The instructional strategy was language literacy as the basis for learn- developed with the assistance of lin- ing French. This has taken form over guists from the University of the past several years and gradually Ouagadougou. It proceeds from the ac- transformed itself into an alternative quisition of reading, writing and arith- strategy of primary schooling. metic skills in Mooré to learning French and study of the entire primary From adult literacy to school curriculum. Participating chil- alternative schooling dren complete the equivalent of the No. 5 February 1999 The effort began, however, with adults. The Manegbzanga Association was con- IK Notes reports periodically on Indig- fronted early on with the problem of enous Knowledge (IK) initiatives in equipping its members — many of Sub-Saharan Africa. It is published by the Africa Region’s Knowledge and whom had had limited or no schooling Learning Center as part of an evolving — to manage their own growing affairs IK partnership between the World Bank, communities, NGOs, develop- and deal with suppliers of agricultural ment institutions and multilateral orga- inputs and clients for their products in nizations. The views expressed in this the vicinity of Ouagadougou. A person article are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the World World Bank from the community who had become Bank Group or its partners in this ini- a civil servant and subsequently be- tiative. A webpage on IK is available at http://www.worldbank.org/aftdr/ik/ come field director for a Swiss NGO, default.htm began working with the villagers in 2 primary school program in four years, instead of the six pre- Catering to the leftover children scribed (and often exceeded, due to grade repetition). In ad- dition, they acquire mastery of the written form of their own Teaching duties were assumed by previously unemployed language. young people of the locality who had at least partial second- “Our working hypothesis,” explains the professor of linguis- ary education, though no previous teaching experience. They tics at the University of Ouagadougou, who helped develop were trained in the method by the supervisory staff from the the program, “is that knowledge of an African language and University of Ouagadougou. Students were drawn essentially use of literacy in that language significantly facilitate acquisi- from the children of Nomgana and the neighboring village tion of the skills that schooling is design— a shortening of Goué who had never enrolled in the local primary school, the time required to complete the primary program, and an generally because their families had chosen another sibling improvement in pass rates on the primary school certificate to attend. They were therefore well beyond the theoretical exams. But the program of the Nomgana centers was also de- limit age for admission to primary schooling (7), averaging veloped with an eye to several other aspects of school quality. over 10 years of age at their entry into the program and, so- A systematic attempt was made to include both agricultural ciologically speaking, had been labeled “less likely to suc- production activities and research into local culture in the ceed.” The organizers made sure that an almost exactly equal curriculum, parents were given an especially active role in number of girls and boys were admitted to the program. Over- school management, and local “resource people” — artisans all, 55 children took part in the first cohort, divided into two and griots (traditional historians and story tellers) in particu- classes, with a student-teacher ratio of 28:1. All were re- lar — were invited to teach classes. quired as preparation to complete an accelerated (6 month) literacy course in the Mooré language. The first two years of instruction were carried on in Mooré, IK Notes would be of interest to: though the French language was taught as a subject. By the third year, students were using the same French texts as their peers in formal primary education. In addition, they ran an animal farm which realized — in the 1997-1998 school year Name — net profits of 233,000 CFA francs (approximately $425) and grew both peanuts and niébé ( cowpeas ) as part of their Institution curriculum. There were no dropouts from the program, whereas the average rate of attrition between the first and Address last years of formal primary education in Burkina Faso is over 40 percent. Surprising results Letters, comments, and requests for publications Tests administered in December 1996 both in the Mooré lan- should be addressed to: guage school and in the neighboring primary school demon- Editor: IK Notes strated that pupils at the center were ahead of those at the Knowledge and Learning Center area’s formal primary school in French and mathematics, and Africa Region, World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Room J5-171 had in addition, of course, a good mastery of the written form Washington, D.C. 20433 of their mother tongue. Interestingly, the level of achieve- E-mail: pmohan@worldbank.org ment of the girls in the group (who comprised a slight major- ity) was well above that of the boys in the formal primary  3 school, though below that of boys in the experimental center. their own language and culture; and in demonstrating the vi- These results were further confirmed the following year when ability and instructional worth of African-language ap- the first cohort from the Mooré language school sat for the proaches to learning French and to mastering primary school primary school certificate. The success rates among the 53 contents. The relatively favored circumstances of the experi- students who took the exam was 53 percent (62 percent for mental school must of course be kept in mind when compar- the boys and 44 percent for the girls) compared to a national ing results from the two types of classes — particularly the average of 42 percent for all formal primary schools in adequate supply of instructional materials and the fact that Burkina Faso (47 percent in the Oubritenga province) and a none of the children attending came, as a proportion of those higher level of gender inequity. in rural primary schools generally do, from other communi- ties or were forced to make a long daily commute on foot. While both the organizers and the community leaders are But the difference in the two series of data, which in fact take satisfied with the results of the program to date, they point no account of the locally focused curricula in which the alter- out several handicaps created by their effort to conform to native school excelled, at least strongly suggest that such the formal primary school regime and ensure full equivalence methods can produce results at least on a par with current with its diplomas. formal schooling. The linguistics professor referred to earlier puts the matter • The rigidity of pre-established schedules and time alloca- succinctly: “We hope that this experiment will contribute to tions to different subject matters required for accreditation overcoming obstacles to the use of African languages in our in the formal system worked against some of the most impor- education system, both as a means of shortening the dura- tant things that the Nomgana center was experimenting — tion and broadening access to primary schooling, and as a such as the inclusion of local materials and resource people new bridge between formal and nonformal education.” in the curriculum, and direct involvement in farm work. “At the same time,” he adds, “the experience can help us re- • Some of the content of French-language textbooks turned think ways of handling our multilingualism, one of the un- out to be quite inappropriate for use once translated into avoidable realities of an African environment. Shortening the Mooré. primary cycle leaves time for mastering and using a written • To match the rhythm and requirements of the official cur- national language in the school curriculum.… Our languages riculum — and to complete it in the reduced time allotted — have been quite simply the victim of prejudices ingrained by the teaching staff had to largely abandon instruction directly the colonial experience, (for) the opposition which some in- in Mooré after the second year, despite the fact that some of sist on drawing between African languages and French is fi- the most encouraging learning results were appearing in nally pointless.” classes taught in the mother tongue. In fact, in many cases, those students who did least well in the French-language por- tion of the curriculum and the subsequent certification tests turned out to be those who had not had sufficient “ground- ing” in Mooré literacy before enrolling. This article was written on the basis of research conducted by Burkinabe, Congolese and American Local endorsement investigators with the support and technical supervi- sion of Peter Easton, Associate Professor, Graduate Studies in Adult Education, Florida State University, On the other hand, stakeholders were virtually unanimous and with the collaboration of the concerned communi- that the effort had been successful where, for the time being, ties. Funding was supplied by the Club du Sahel/ it counted most: in enabling “leftover” local children to gain OECD, the CILSS and the Association for the Develop- ment of Education in Africa. formal certification while strengthening their capacities in 4