A Call for the Transformation of Education for All in Africa Through Curricula

Author: Omar Thiam, UNESCO-IBE Education Specialist

At current rates, around 2 in 10 children in sub-Saharan Africa will still be excluded from school in 2030. But, in addition to seeking to expand access to education, countries should contextualize, simplify and democratize curricula and teaching methods.

International concern about the state of education in Africa focuses on the large number of out-of-school children, who currently account for around a third of the world’s total. However, while widening access to education on the continent must remain a priority, decision-makers should also pay greater attention to curricula and different pedagogical approaches. 

In sub-Saharan Africa, many children leave elementary school without basic skills. Some over-age children enrolled in the system are more likely to drop out overall. 

Moreover, sub-Saharan Africa has the fastest-growing school-age population in the world. Unless countries speed up curriculum and other reforms, the quality of education will deteriorate further, and the proportion of qualified teachers is likely to continue to fall, as it has over the past two decades. Moreover, the disruption caused by COVID-19 has pushed many children out of the school system, and they won't return. 

UNESCO and the Global Monitoring Report on Education have presented several policy options to address these challenges, including increasing the number of classrooms, eliminating school fees, and removing barriers to progression, such as national examinations. However, the decades-long emphasis on widening access and “catching up” with the rest of the world leaves many other essential issues to be explored. In particular, are current African school systems preparing individuals to thrive in a rapidly changing world? To what extent should we address other, more fundamental concerns, such as the relevance of curriculum content, specifically pedagogical approaches, and the idea of the classroom or traditional school as the only place for learning?

In Africa, educational reform that goes beyond improving access has had mixed results. Curricula still largely resemble those inherited from the colonial period, which aimed to train mainly office workers and technicians for the administrations of the time and, as such, were focused on the transmission of European economic, social, and cultural norms. However, the aim of education today has broadened to enable the development of the whole person in their context and to equip them with the skills needed to succeed. This is one of UNESCO-IBE's top priorities through the “endogenization of curricula.”

The 1990 World Declaration on Education for All recognizes that basic education must first and foremost aim to situate the child in their environment and enable them to fully develop the skills needed to respond appropriately to that environment's opportunities, constraints, and inconsistencies. Consequently, in addition to seeking to widen access to education, there is an urgent need to contextualize, simplify and democratize curricula and teaching methods.

Education adapted to the local context, in a language that the child understands, offers the best hope of improving their acquisition of the basic skills essential for attaining the higher-level competencies needed to build a scientifically literate society. Efforts are being made across Africa to design curricula that better reflect local conditions. Still, many fail at the implementation stage due to the inadequate development of accompanying teaching resources and support for teachers throughout the transition. With technical support from UNESCO-IBE, the “Educational Resources” project aims to support African countries in the design and use of textbooks.

The need for simplification is closely linked to contextualization. Current African curricula are overloaded. Not everything can be learned in school; the focus must be on the learning schools can best deliver, such as mastering basic numeracy and literacy skills.

As far as the democratization of learning is concerned, COVID-19 revealed deep inequalities in education systems. Still, it also created an opportunity to consider other ways of widening access to schooling, which is what the UNESCO-IBE HELA (Hybrid Teaching, Learning, and Assessment) initiative is about. Innovations in digital platforms and teachers' adaptation to the “new normal” point to the potential benefits of extending education beyond schooling while filling gaps in learning provision. In addition to widening access to basic education, democratizing learning also means giving all children an equal chance to pursue further and specialized education. This requires identifying clear educational pathways and providing every child with the means to participate.

Today, children represent almost half of Africa's population, and their total will reach one billion by 2055. If suitably qualified, this vast human resource could help lift hundreds of millions of Africans out of poverty - a dividend that would benefit both the continent and the world.

The picture of education in Africa is not uniformly bleak; some experiments with approaches such as mother-tongue teaching and differentiated incentives for teachers are beginning to show results and can be built on. However, alongside improvements to existing systems, countries with the support of partners should recognize and change what no longer works. 

The challenges and issues are many. On the one hand, there is the need to consolidate the objectives of universal education for all, i.e., curb the dropout rate and ensure real and equitable access to schooling, especially for the most disadvantaged and rural populations.

Given the low level of student achievement at all levels, curricula and teaching methods need to evolve towards a more significant application of knowledge and develop programs that value critical thinking, reflection, and initiative. This means increasing the number of teachers and raising their qualifications and status so that they can concentrate on their teaching classes and not on more lucrative sideline activities or extra lessons.

African education systems are at a critical point in their evolution. Faced with the economic, social, and cultural realities of international openness, they need to undergo a profound transformation, particularly in curricula, to give every African child the chance of success and fulfillment.