New Brunswick Community College

Published purpose

The purpose of this project is to increase the quality of learning in basic education in Senegal by improving access to school textbooks for students enrolled in public elementary schools that are part of the Kaolack and Thiès academies, and to ensure better maintenance of textbook inventories in these academies. To do so, the project is implementing a school textbook repair program, building school awareness of the importance of textbook repairs, training school administrators and officials in decentralized governance structures in these jurisdictions on managing textbook inventories and providing schools with cabinets to store textbooks. The project involves developing a school textbook repair training program and a micro-enterprise management training module tailored to the Senegalese context. This training is dispensed to some 120 repairers, recruited from within the ranks of unemployed youth, women and less-educated groups. Other project activities include: conducting a school-level awareness campaign, training representatives of these schools in textbook repair and training officials in decentralized governance structures on the issues relating to inventory management and textbook repair. In addition, the project provides 1,550 public elementary schools in these two jurisdictions with appropriate cabinets to ensure textbook durability. This project is expected to directly affect 1,550 schools and their communities, and create 120 repairer jobs. In addition, a similar project implemented in Mali provides opportunities for knowledge transfer and a South-South collaboration based on the repairers trained in Mali, whose experience could be leveraged in Senegal. In addition to prolonging the life of school textbooks by at least 3 years and helping the State realize potential annual savings of nearly $1M, the project has a positive environmental impact and helps increase local populations’ incomes in a lasting manner. The project is part of Senegal’s national education priorities as set out in the Program for Improvements to Quality, Equity and Transparency in Education and Training (PAQUET-EF) and the economic growth priorities outlined in the Emergent Senegal Plan.