Growth trajectories in SEL and academic outcomes across non-formal education modalities in Southern Senegal

• In Event: Socio-Emotional Learning: contextualization, assessment and growth trajectories – findings from Lebanon and Senegal

Proposal

In Senegal, education is compulsory and free up to age 16. Yet, the 2021 gross enrollment rate for primary school is 81%. In Southern Senegal, reasons for children not attending school include lack of formal primary school in some communities, or a preference for religious education which parents can find in the koranic schools, called daara. There are also pockets of children who dropped out or never went to school (and may now be overage) and who lack a clear pathway for reintegrating formal schools.

The author will present on a project aimed to provide all students in the target communities with the right to education, by offering non-formal education modalities that would allow students to benefit from foundational skills instruction and from a clear pathway for (re)-integrating the formal education system, or further professional training, depending on their age.

Throughout the five years of the project, the project worked with the communities it served to mobilize collective action in order to establish non-formal education models to offer ALL children a means to access quality education, in essence an act of protest to shake up the status quo. The non-formal education models established by the project and the communities included:

1) Classes Passerelles: a 9-month accelerated education program that offered reading and math instruction
2) Community daara: a 3-year model established through a partnership with Koranic masters who agreed to allow their students to follow a math and reading curriculum in addition to the religious education they already received
3) Community-based schools (or Ecole Communautaire de Base): a 3-year model focused on teaching foundational skills in communities where no public schools existed
4) Vocational trainings (or Formations aux Metiers): training in a specific trade lasting from a few weeks to a few months offered to older youth to allow them to learn specific technical skills as well as soft skills.

The project assessed socio-emotional learning skills at baseline, midline and endline using a SEL tool contextualized for Senegal. The socio-emotional learning framework used for the project was the CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning) framework. Passerelles assessed students’ conflict resolution skills, self-efficacy and hostile attribution bias.

Upon completion of the non-formal program cycle, students were also assessed by the district education offices in reading and math in order to determine whether they had the minimum proficiency required for transition into the formal school system. Over the life of the project, the transition rate from non-formal into formal education was 31%, with rates ranging widely between the three models.

This presentation will present the results of the 5-year study tracing the growth trajectories of students in the different education modalities in terms of academic and socio-emotional learning outcomes, and discuss what factors may have contributed to the transition of students from non-formal into the formal education system or into the professional world.

Authors

• Yvonne Cao, FHI 360

• Rafael Eduardo Contreras Gomez, FHI 360