APA-Dakar (Senegal) The Coalition des organisations en synergie pour la défense de l’éducation publique (Cosydep) is urging the education community to be vigilant and generous in negotiating the remaining few weeks of the school year.
The educational system has paid a heavy price for the violent protests following the sentencing last Thursday of Ousmane Sonko, Macky Sall’s main opponent, to a two-year jail term for “immoral behaviour”.
Schools and universities were particularly targeted by demonstrators, who ransacked furniture and destroyed several other items.
With just a few weeks to go before the close of classes, the smooth running of the end-of-year exams is under threat, prompting the ‘Coalition des organisations en synergie pour la défense de l’éducation publique’
(Cosydep) to call on the political players to protect the school from their rivalries and competitions.
In a statement issued on Monday June 5, it deplores the violence perpetrated against children, as well as the threats of disruption to the last term of the school year due to the early onset of winter, schools that are not always up to standard, strikes and other course suspensions, and arrests of pupils and teachers.
It also points to the imminence of the end-of-year exams, being officially two weeks away from the CFEE, the first diploma marking school attendance, and five weeks away from the BFEM and Baccalaureat.
Cosydep also regrets that after the signing of the historic agreements between unions and the government in February 2022, no meeting has been convened 12 months after the follow-up committee was set up.
In view of these observations, Cosydep recommends preserving the school’s main mission, particularly in crisis situations, by avoiding blurring it with speeches and decisions that could sow doubts about the meaning and usefulness of what is learned.
The non-governmental organization also calls for care to be taken to ensure that the stability of the school environment is not jeopardized by endogenous impulses. To this end, it stresses, the monitoring system must remain functional, even in the event of an external crisis, and partners’ alerts must be heeded.
She suggests lifting restrictions on internet access to enable the deployment of distance education, and urges the educational community to be vigilant and generous, both to negotiate these few weeks that separate us from the end of the year, and to look ahead to the first quarter of next year, on the eve of the presidential election in
February 2024.
“Protecting education from the rivalries and competitions of political players, and getting it through this period of socio-political turbulence without damage, must be a unanimous watchword. If only for the sake of the children, the head of state is urged to find a happy way out of the crisis, in conjunction with the stakeholders,” Cosydep
says.
For a return to peace and serenity, Cosydep is urgently appealing to the country’s leader to address the nation, with a view to reassuring citizens, especially children, rebuilding trust, giving young people a prominent place in the dialogue process, so as to listen to and understand them better.
He should also work to connect the various dialogue forums and issue a direct invitation to the opposition,
Ousmane Sonko in particular, the organisation said.
ARD/ac/fss/APA