Voices From Rural Guinea On The Education Of Girls And Boys

Introduction

“A Princeton University team conducted a nine-day visit to Guinea, hosted by UNICEF/Guinea. The objectives of the visit were to:

• understand the progress made regarding girls’ education;
• hear the stories and voices behind the issues currently facing education, specifically girls’ education; and
• to provide recommendations based on the field visits.

Our report was commissioned by the Education Office of UNICEF/New York and its Guinea field office, which is specifically interested in better leveraging its relationships with its partners. These partners include the Government of Guinea, local non-government agencies, local governments, and international aid agencies. UNICEF is seeking more qualitative data and analysis in order to make decisions regarding the sustainability of its initiatives.

The UNICEF/Guinea office is particularly concerned about the sustainability of its education project endeavors. For this, they requested policy recommendations on two levels:

1. strengthening partnerships with the donor community as well as with the Guinean government;
2. improving strategies based on analysis of quantitative and qualitative data gathered at the local level.

Furthermore, they wanted a report that would not replicate earlier studies on girls’ education in Guinea, and one that would be both innovative and independent.

The Princeton team approached the problem of education for girls in Guinea from the perspective of the primary stakeholders who are at the receiving end of these initiatives: parents, teachers, administrators, and students (both female and male). These stakeholders are connected to formal schools operated under the African Girls’ Education Initiative (known as AGEI schools) and to non-formal schools (known as Nafa centers). Thus, this report provides such qualitative data from
formal and non-formal schools, and of males and females, in two ways:

• A compilation of interviews with i) parents; ii) students; iii) teachers; iv) local government representatives; and iv) a grassroots organisation.
• Research findings and recommendations categorized under the following four themes:
  1. infrastructure and funding;
  2. relevance and quality of education
  3. retention, completion and performance of girls in primary school; and
  4. community ownership, and partnerships in the education system.

The objective of the visit was to identify pathways and barriers to education from the perspective of these stakeholders, and to examine the existing partnerships between the government, local nongovernment and other community organisations and international agencies providing education in Guinea.

We analyzed the effectiveness of UNICEF/Guinea’s strategies in improving the performance, access and quality of both formal (AGEI) schools and non-formal schools (Nafa centers) in rural and urban Guinea. We spoke with relevant stakeholders, including parents, teachers, and students, as well as local and national government officials and groups, and non-governmentn entities. Our conversations with these stakeholders formed the basis of our policy recommendations.

There is a dearth of qualitative data regarding girls’ education overall. With regard to Guinea, aside from one known case study on Nafa centers commissioned by UNICEF, limited qualitative research has been undertaken, especially in rural Guinea. Conversations with USAID referenced a 1998 study11 that assessed students’ perceptions of their own abilities and that of their peers, examining differences by gender. In 1999 USAID conducted interviews and focus group discussions with parents, teachers and local administrators of four primary schools in Lelouma prefecture in Middle Guinea.12 UNICEF is keen on filling this gap in qualitative data. The participatory rural appraisal techniques that we adapted are not frequently used as a research tool in rural Guinea, and thus the information we gleaned by from our visits to communities allowed us unique insight into the key issues identified by local stakeholders.