After classes ended at 3 p.m., Ndeye Penda Soumaré, a teacher at Guedel-Mbodji elementary school in Kaolack, 180 km southeast of Dakar, began a math lesson in front of a small class. It counts: "Juroom ñaar fukk, juroom ñaar fukk ak benn..." (seventy, seventy-one...", in Wolof). Exceptionally, exchanges between the teacher and the students are not in French. Since December, two classes at the school have joined the 'Ndaw Wune' tutoring program ('for every child' in Wolof and 'what a success!' in Pulaar), using local languages to fill the reading and math deficiencies of elementary school students.
In Senegal, none of the six main languages (Wolof, Pulaar, Serer, Diola, Mandinka and Soninke) is used in public education. More than 90% of children begin their schooling in French, a language that many do not understand or speak, to the point of being an obstacle to learning, sometimes even a blockage. "The child loses everything he has learned and falls behind, which partly explains the many school failures and dropouts", analyzes Mbacké Diagne, Inspector General of National Education and Training, in charge of national languages within the Ministry. . Less than 10% of 15-year-old Senegalese achieve minimum proficiency levels in reading, mathematics and science, according to the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA, 2017).
Based on the fact that children who receive education in a language they speak at home are 30% more likely to be able to read at the end of primary school, the Senegalese NGO Associates in Research
ARED has been working in the field of training, education and publishing in local languages since 1991. With a budget of 600,000 dollars (about 564,000 euros), the "Ndaw Wune" program has been extended since December to four regions of Senegal (Kaolack, Saint-Louis, Diourbel and Matam) and affects 4,000 students in initiation courses (CI) and preparatory courses (CP). Provided in three languages (Wolof, Serer and Pulaar), this tutoring is spread over a school year, school holidays included.
A crutch "
Three times a week, from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., groups of 20 students meet in class. For reading, one group in "learning" works with the tutor, while two others are in "autonomy", carrying out exercises on a textbook in local languages designed by ARED. The same principle applies for mathematics, with two groups per class. "Working independently and in small groups helps them understand better, it empowers them and promotes mutual support," says Fatou Gueye Niass, tutor of the "Ndaw Wune" program in Kaolack.
This flexible teaching approach aims to ensure that by the end of the year, all students have acquired the basics in these two subjects. They are assessed monthly, and progress is already noticeable: Fatou Niang, 12, has gone from 18th to 8th place in her class. "This program is a crutch, it allows understanding by assimilation," notes Malick Fall, director of the Guedel-Mbodji school. Trained and assessed regularly by supervisors, the tutors rely on a guide detailing each lesson according to the levels. "The students are our children, we want to help them to succeed," says teacher Ndeye Penda Soumaré, who says she is paid 50,000 CFA francs per month (76 euros).
If some feared that French would be neglected in favor of local languages, now parents and teachers agree on the progress of the program. "People are beginning to understand that local languages are important and can have the same dignity as others," says Malick Fall.
Mamadou Ly, the director of ARED, hopes to increase the number of students in the "Ndaw Wune" program tenfold next year. A pioneer in innovative approaches to bilingual education, the NGO launched from 2009 to 2017 a bilingual program in Wolof and Serer in three regions of the country for elementary cycles. She also developed educational tools and provided teacher training for the bilingual "Reading for All" program, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (Usaid), which reached 1.2 million students in seven regions of the country from 2017 to 2021.
Since April 2022, the government has set up the "Strengthening Reading for All" program, funded to the tune of $80 million by Usaid, to reform its national education system. Following the recommendation of Unesco advocating teaching in the mother tongue of children from the first years of schooling, it plans to adopt bilingualism from the start of the 2023-2024 school year for all public elementary schools in nine regions of the country. The measure must then be generalized to the whole territory by 2028.
