Renewed Koranic Schooling in Mali : Expanding a traditional form of schooling

• In Event: Decreasing vulnerability: Inclusion in education and community resilience

Proposal

The Program of Education for All Children in Mali (PACETEM) is an effort of an NGO consortium led by Education Development Center and working closely with the Ministry of Education that covers every region of Mali seeking to enroll nearly 600,000 of the country’s most vulnerable children over four years through a variety of educational strategies, including a renewed form of Koranic schooling.

Koranic schools have been educating children in Mali for centuries, and there is often a cultural preference amongst parents, especially in rural areas, for the Koranic schools’ focus on moral teachings and behavior as well as reading the Koran, as compared with the experience of the “French” school. There are large numbers of children attending Koranic schools – those whose parents either prefer the Koranic school model or cannot pay the expenses associated with public schools. There are two main types of Koranic schools in Mali - those that teach only the Koran, the focus of PACETEM) and the Medersas, which are official schools integrated in the educational system.

Through the Renewed Koranic School model, which includes instruction in French Reading and Writing as well as Math, the Malian education system seeks to bring thousands of children (62,249 for PACETEM alone) into the formal system and provide them with skills needed for the workplace and life. PACETEM works with the NGO ENDA (Environment and Development of the Third World), which has been piloting this model for several years, to lead the development and implementation of Renewed Koranic Schools throughout the country. Potential Renewed Koranic Schools are identified during community meetings at the village or neighborhood level, and NGO agents reach out to Koranic school teachers to gauge their interest in transforming their Koranic schools into Renewed Koranic Schools, which means accepting to reorganize their academic schedule to include 700 hours of French Reading and Writing as well as Math classes. These classes, which follow the national curriculum, are taught by a teacher that has been trained in the formal school system and who comes to the Koranic school to teach the classes. The Renewed Koranic Schools receive investment in improved infrastructure and materials in addition to the time of the French and Math teacher. Under the Renewed Koranic School model, the Ministry has agreed to provide civil servant teachers to the Koranic schools that accept this transformation. However, the decrees creating this model are not yet final, and the Ministry requested that schools identified by PACETEM use locally-recruited and trained volunteers rather than civil servant teachers until further notice, which has management and budget implications.

PACETEM NGOs started this program in October 2018 and by the end of June 2019 had enrolled 9,849 students in 234 newly transformed Renewed Koranic Schools

Author

• Christina N'Tchougan-Sonou, Education Development Center (EDC)