“Right now, governments are making a lot of effort on quantity and not quality,” Victorine Djitrinou, international education, advocacy and campaign coordinator for ActionAid International, told IRIN at a recent conference on violence against schoolgirls held in Saly, Senegal.
While enrolment numbers have improved, retention and graduation rates remain a serious problem and, in some cases, have even decreased. Officials in many West African countries say tens of thousands of unqualified teachers have a lot to do with it.
Pushed by the international community to increase enrolment, but limited by World Bank and International Monetary Fund programmes to cut costs, many West African countries hired teachers en masse, but reduced salaries and training, Education Ministry officials, teachers and aid workers told IRIN.
