My Question and Some Answers
As I prepared for this experience, my question that I wanted to explore was access and equity to education particularly as it relates to students with disabilities, girls, and immigrants. The following is what I gathered.
Students with disabilities, for the most part, do not attend school. There is one school in the country for the visually impaired where approximately 20% of students with visual impairments attend school. It is our equivalent of a K-12 school where students apply and once accepted, can stay until they finish their education. It is well-equipped and class sizes are small. It is also a boarding school because it serves students throughout the country. There are five schools for students with hearing impairments. I did not visit any of these schools, but they are in various regions of the country.
Students with physical disabilities and cognitive disabilities do not attend school. Teachers are not trained to work with students with these disabilities and schools are not equipped to support them.
As for the inclusion of girls, I am happy to find that there were as many girls as boys in all the classes I visited. From my previous post on FAWE and girls' education:
FAWE was formed for the education of girls by women ministers to address the lack of educational opportunities for girls.There are 36 chapters of FAWE throughout Africa and 14 of them are for the French speaking countries such as Senegal. Their main objective is gender equity by providing and promoting access to education, training, and keeping girls in school. They push for parental and community involvement. Because most teachers in Senegal are men, they have provided teacher training to integrate the classroom and since 2005 more than 20,000 teachers have been trained on gender issues which include some basic concepts around restroom usage and more complex issues such as violence against girls.
There are many programs and opportunities within FAWE. Right now there is a push for girls to take STEM classes. They offer scholarships for girls who may not be able to afford continuing education. They also have a national competition for the most significant change story. They hold career days where women who have been successful in their continuing education return to be role models and provide motivation for the girls. There is also an excellence program where each year there is an exam given by each department. They look for the 10 best students and put them in a special program and track their success. There is now even a National Day of Girls' Education on November 11th which was decreed by the president.
From what I have seen and information I have gathered, there are as many girls as there are boys in classes and the teachers claim that the girls are now performing better than the boys. They are embracing their opportunities and working hard. However, for higher education, there are still far fewer young women than young men because they often have to care for the home or they marry at a young age. This is one of the areas that FAWE will continue to work on in the future. Another area is cooking classes for boys! The men do not cook at all so there is a push for them to learn and share the responsibilities in the home so boys and girls can have equal access to the opportunities for higher education.
And finally, as far as students who are immigrants and their language acquisition, this was not really observed and there is not a big influx of immigrants. Because Wolof, French, and English are already spoken in the country (and often in neighboring countries), students assimilate more easily.
So overall, gender equity has come a long way but special education is severely limited and immigrant assimilation was not really observed.
As I prepared for this experience, my question that I wanted to explore was access and equity to education particularly as it relates to students with disabilities, girls, and immigrants. The following is what I gathered.
Students with disabilities, for the most part, do not attend school. There is one school in the country for the visually impaired where approximately 20% of students with visual impairments attend school. It is our equivalent of a K-12 school where students apply and once accepted, can stay until they finish their education. It is well-equipped and class sizes are small. It is also a boarding school because it serves students throughout the country. There are five schools for students with hearing impairments. I did not visit any of these schools, but they are in various regions of the country.
Students with physical disabilities and cognitive disabilities do not attend school. Teachers are not trained to work with students with these disabilities and schools are not equipped to support them.
As for the inclusion of girls, I am happy to find that there were as many girls as boys in all the classes I visited. From my previous post on FAWE and girls' education:
FAWE was formed for the education of girls by women ministers to address the lack of educational opportunities for girls.There are 36 chapters of FAWE throughout Africa and 14 of them are for the French speaking countries such as Senegal. Their main objective is gender equity by providing and promoting access to education, training, and keeping girls in school. They push for parental and community involvement. Because most teachers in Senegal are men, they have provided teacher training to integrate the classroom and since 2005 more than 20,000 teachers have been trained on gender issues which include some basic concepts around restroom usage and more complex issues such as violence against girls.
There are many programs and opportunities within FAWE. Right now there is a push for girls to take STEM classes. They offer scholarships for girls who may not be able to afford continuing education. They also have a national competition for the most significant change story. They hold career days where women who have been successful in their continuing education return to be role models and provide motivation for the girls. There is also an excellence program where each year there is an exam given by each department. They look for the 10 best students and put them in a special program and track their success. There is now even a National Day of Girls' Education on November 11th which was decreed by the president.
From what I have seen and information I have gathered, there are as many girls as there are boys in classes and the teachers claim that the girls are now performing better than the boys. They are embracing their opportunities and working hard. However, for higher education, there are still far fewer young women than young men because they often have to care for the home or they marry at a young age. This is one of the areas that FAWE will continue to work on in the future. Another area is cooking classes for boys! The men do not cook at all so there is a push for them to learn and share the responsibilities in the home so boys and girls can have equal access to the opportunities for higher education.
And finally, as far as students who are immigrants and their language acquisition, this was not really observed and there is not a big influx of immigrants. Because Wolof, French, and English are already spoken in the country (and often in neighboring countries), students assimilate more easily.
So overall, gender equity has come a long way but special education is severely limited and immigrant assimilation was not really observed.