2024-03-17 20:41:18
Get real-time updates straight to your device, subscribe now.
The statutory members of the steering and coordination committee of the project for results in preschool and basic education (PRePEF) were in session this Wednesday, February 13, 2024, in a hotel reception on the square.
It was the secretary general of the Ministry of Pre-university Education and Literacy, Julien Bongono who kicked off the work of this session which has the main objective of submitting for the appreciation of said statutory members , the 2023 annual activity report and the two 2024 PTBAs for approval.
In his welcome speech, the PRePEF coordinator, Abdoulaye Kaba, thanked everyone for their presence, before indicating that during the year 2022-2023, the project carried out some flagship activities to achieve her goals.
“These activities concern in particular the construction of 1000 classrooms which has been started. But today, we are finalizing 565 classrooms. Among these 565 classrooms, 96 classrooms, with an average of 32 children per room, are functional, i.e. approximately 3,060 children are already enrolled in pre-primary classes in rural and peri-urban areas. Also, today, the project was able to acquire and make available to the government 19,620 tablets into which educational data will be inserted and these tablets will be used to collect all data concerning the education system. And this concerns all levels: pre-primary, primary and fundamental education. Today, the preschool policy is validated. Guinea did not have a preschool policy. 784 teachers are trained. Others are in classrooms, others are waiting to start teaching as soon as the classrooms end. Today, we have also developed a policy of transferring non-salary budgets to schools as a subsidy to assist them in their daily management,” he said.
Speaking of project monitoring, he will let it be known that they have put in place a whole monitoring battery to speed things up. “You know that 2023 was the year of challenges that had to be met. It was necessary to build. These 500 rooms, if you divide them into three classrooms, we built approximately 200 or so schools in less than a year. And it was a four to five month contract. We held strategic and close meetings with the entrepreneurs every week. This has allowed us today to have more than 70℅ classrooms available today. And the second phase, by the end of April, will be available. The monitoring framework is made up of the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Pre-university Education and all project stakeholders. »
For his part, the secretary general of MEPU-A, first of all magnified the various contributions of PRePEF in the Guinean education system. According to him, since the start of this project, it is clear that it has achieved a large number of results which today are the pride of all the stakeholders in the said project, but also which meet the aspirations of the Guinean education system at its core.
“This project was able to set up pre-primary classes, and around 96 of these pre-primary classes are now operational throughout the national territory. Ensuring today that village children have access to preschool education is a major result of this project. Because preschool education was reserved only for the children of executives and people with means. So I would say that the PRePEF brings something new. Other results, not the least of which relate to the quality of education, have also been achieved. As you know, trainers and teachers have been trained and are now being deployed into the education system to help improve the quality of learning. Beyond that, equipment is purchased in large numbers today. We have more than 19,000 tablets that have been purchased and will be sent to allow teachers to work. In these tablets there will be educational content, training modules to strengthen the capacity of teachers. These are among other major results of this project which is ongoing and whose execution rate exceeds 70℅.
Further, he made recommendations to the statutory members of the specific steering and coordination committee. The first recommendation, he will say, is to ensure that all the results that have been achieved are continued. “And that there is consistency between the activities already carried out and those which must be carried out to achieve finalization…”
Note that the development objective of the PRePEF is to improve access and quality of preschool and basic education and to strengthen the management capacities of the education system for better results. The project activities cover the entire national territory and are structured into four components including:
Component 1: Improve access and equity with a focus on preschool. Component 2: Quality of preschool and basic education. Component 3: Strengthen the capacity of the education sector. Component 4: Support essential activities for implementation, monitoring and evaluation and management of the project.
Youl