Long before he was elected president of Senegal in March, Mr. Abdoulaye Wade was a teacher. "I was responsible for 85 children in my class," he recalled in his welcoming address to the Dakar conference. The average ratio of students to teachers has since come down to around 50, but primary classes still are overcrowded and conditions for Senegalese teachers remain poor.
Although Senegal was proud to host the World Education Forum, it is in no position to boast about its educational indicators. In 1998 Senegal's primary gross enrolment ratio was 65.5 per cent, up from 56.8 per cent in 1990, but still below the sub-Saharan average. One constraint has been the difficulty of recruiting enough teachers. Senegal signed its first structural adjustment programme in 1979 -- one of the earliest in Africa -- stipulating tight controls over the hiring of new public sector personnel, including teachers. Meanwhile, the real salaries of practicing teachers have stagnated, contributing to demoralization.
As a partial response, the previous government of President Abdou Diouf began recruiting 1,200 volunteer teachers a year in 1995, promising that after five years they would be hired on a contractual basis. The volunteer scheme made it possible to increase enrolment rates somewhat, but it has been controversial with the teachers' unions, which see it as an attempt to erode the employment status of regular teachers.
As the presidential election campaign unfolded, the teachers' discontent
was compounded by that of volunteers who had not yet received contracts.
In addition, teacher training college graduates who had not found teaching
positions staged raucous street demonstrations. Among his numerous campaign
pledges, Mr. Wade promised to overhaul Senegal's education system and recruit
more teachers. Once elected -- the first time in Senegal that an opposition
leader has secured the presidency -- he renewed his pledge to place the
teacher training graduates and hire more teachers generally. But public
pressure remains. During the World Education Forum, Senegalese volunteer
and contractual teachers demonstrated outside the conference site to highlight
their demands for regular teaching status.
