Organizational and structural strengthening of Parents’ associations for a better handling of schools in Central African Republic
- Main funding: EuropeAid (Cooperation Office of the European Commission) 75%
- Global budget: €700, 000
- Duration: 42 months (March 2011 – August 2014)
- Number of beneficiaries: 47, 200 pupils and 244 teachers-parents1 (direct beneficiaries), 626, 000 primary school pupils (indirect beneficiaries)
- Partners: Ministry of Education, Ministry of Social Affairs, FNAPEEC (National Federation of Parents and Students of CAR), Academy Inspection, Head of school district/sector leaders
A little bit more than half of Central African children between 6 and 11 years old (55, 8%) attend primary school. The Central African Republic is therefore half-way to achieving the Millennium Development Goals.
Girls are far less provided with schooling than boys, and the level is globally low in the country (6,7% of 11-year-old children have actually completed primary school).
Like other Central African institutions, the Ministry of Education regrets the extreme weakness of its decentralized structures. The disparity between Bangui and the provinces has increased, and the children living in urban areas are provided with better schooling than those living in rural areas. Seven prefectures – including the Ouaka – have a net schooling rate in primary school of less than 7%.
This program aims to help reducing poverty by improving access to education for all, through a revival of the FNAPEEC, in order to give Parents’ associations the means to better handle the schools.
It unfolds in three phases:
The first consists in revisiting – together with the actors of the Education sector in CAR – the management tools used by the Central African APE (Parents’ Associations), those being too poor and unsuitable. It will rely on organizational and technical support to the coordination staff of the FNAPEEC, the redesigning of these decentralized agencies’ constitutive and technical tools, the formalization of the recognition of its mandates and statutes by the Ministry of Education, the set-up of thematic training and dissemination within the network, and the creation of a database.
During the second phase, Triangle G H will distribute the instruction manual to the APE of the Ouaka Prefecture, and will accompany them in its use in order to improve school management by pupils’ parents. This phase will also enhance positive interactions between the formal branch (Ministry of Education, Academy Inspections, schools management team) and the associative branch (members of the FNAPEEC network), heavily involved in the running of the schools. It will rely on training on the pilot application of the new statutes and guidelines, on the networking of actors and exchange practices designed to stimulate and structure the APE to allow them to co-manage the schools and respond to the children needs.
Finally, Triangle G H will conduct an assessment on the impact of the second phase, and, according to the results of this assessment, will revise the instruction manual and the working method, if necessary. The final instruction manual will be distributed in all the prefectures of the country.
1 Teachers-parents are there to make up for the lack of teachers having tenure. They are provided with adequate training and are paid by the parents’ association.
