USAID/Guinea: Parents Prove Potent Advocates for Schools

OCTOBER 4, 2006

Parents Prove Potent Advocates for Schools

In Guinea's Forest Region, school committees trained under the USAID-funded PACEEQ program are providing government administrators with much-needed community support.

N'ZÉRÉKORÉ - Whether building a latrine, serving lunches, running a library or promoting adult literacy, local school committees have proven to be a formidable force for the improvement of education in the Forest Region of Guinea.

Called APEAEs (Association des Parents d'Éléves et des Amis de l'École, or association of parents and friends of the school), school committees here have received extensive training through the PACEEQ project funded by USAID/Guinea. In Forest Guinea the project is implemented by Save the Children under the World Education consortium for PACEEQ.

Under the PACEEQ project, training of parents associations is intended to make them capable of participating in the management of the school and to increase equity between boys and girls and between children living in urban and rural areas. The effort to develop grass-roots organizations to support schools mirrors the Guinean government's drive to decentralize education services.

Laurent Camara, president of the Bossou APEAE

In laying the foundation for local management, PACEEQ trained local organizations, who in turn trained APEAE members in a variety of organizational skills, including internal governance, educational quality, financial management, student health and nutrition, and gender equity. APEAE members, particularly women, have benefited from the project's literacy component, which is part of the Literacy program led by Guinea's Service Nationale d'Alphabetisation (or the National Literacy Service).

During a recent field visit by USAID officials, APEAE members described efforts to improve school conditions that illustrate, in the words of one member, "the embryo of democracy" at work in the region's local communities. Specifically:

-- In the Didita District of Lola Prefecture, the APEAE manages a community library of French literature and textbooks (made possible through a separate grant from Save the Children) that give school children supplemental reading opportunities. The Didita APEAE also built a latrine for its school.

-- In Gama District, the school committee supports a center for adults seeking to improve their competence in the local language, Pele. The post-literacy center provides instruction to 18 students for four hours a week. Four of the 18 students are themselves members of the Gama APEAE.

-- In Bossou sub-prefecture, the APEAE is using a uniform set of criteria to evaluate the school's physical infrastructure (as the presence of latrines or a fence around school grounds), its quality of instruction (teacher-to-student ratio, textbooks per student) and other performance factors. By referring to the same quality criteria, school administrators and the APEAE can focus their annual planning and streamline efforts at collaboration between teachers and parents.

The PACEEQ approach rests on the axiom that the community alone knows its needs and is therefore the best able to identify solutions. In this context the APEAEs have emerged as an effective vehicle, through partnerships among school, community, local government and civil society, for communities to organize, have a voice and take meaningful action.

As observed by a recent PACEEQ evaluation report, "parents associations have become an essential tool of community mobilization responsible for the improvement of the schools' quality and to foster equality of access (parents and children are made aware of the necessity to send their children to school, teachers receive advice, [and] communities become involved in tasks required by the school, such as repairs.)"

As one member of the Bossou APEAE put it: "The community has placed confidence in us."

Story and photo by Richard Stirba