Projet PAEQUE et équité d’accès des enfants des zones défavorisées à l’éducation de qualité dans la région du centre

Abstract

This research is entitled "PAEQUE project and equity of children to have access to quality education in underprivileged areas of the Centre region". It aims at improving the level of equity access to education in for primary cycle children in remoted areas of the Centre region. This is an ex-post evaluation, which enabled us to verify the achievements of the project and assess whether the project met the needs and expectations of local actors. It is also a matter of gaining more grounds for future projects and their financing. Therefore, in order to take full measure of the problem that holds our attention in this research, namely the persistence of disparities in access to education in ZEPs and underprivileged areas particularly in the primary, cycle, we adopted both the quantitative and qualitative approach for data collection. A documentary research was firstly carry out, followed by some empirical investigations (survey by questionnaire and semi-structured interviews) on contract teachers and other teachers officials in public primary schools in the underprivileged areas of our sample study. Moreover, the resource persons of the PAEQUE Project Unit, particularly the Former General Coordinator and the Former Technical Coordinator of the same project were also interview. The data thus collected were analyze on the descriptive and content-related levels. From these analyses, it essentially stems out that an average of 53% of respondents in underprivileged areas do not even know about the PAEQUE project and therefore do not know what the project has brought to these areas. On the other hand, 76% of respondents believe that the proportion of students who achieve good reading proficiency levels via the Early Grade Reading Assessment (ELPC), and the proportion of students who achieve good mathematics proficiency reference via the evaluation of calculation in the small classes (ECPC) in underprivileged areas, is higher among boys. Hence, this reveals the lack of equity and the urgent need to take into account the gender aspect enabling therefore every children to benefit from a quality basic education. Moreover, this study reveals that despite the efforts made within the framework of the PAEQUE project, disparities of all kinds persist in basic education.

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