Project profile — Support for Burkina Faso's Basic Education Strategic Development Program

The expected results of this project include the following: (1) narrower gaps in access to education, thereby improving gender parity at the primary and post primary levels; (2) improved quality of service delivery for basic education; (3) more effective basic education steering and management practices at all levels of the education system.

Results achieved as of December 2020 include: (1) success rate for the 2020 Undergraduate Study Certificate is 36.5% (including 32.7% for girls), compared to 26.6% in 2019 ( including 22.6% for girls), indicating an increase of 9.9 and 10.1 percentage points respectively for all students and girls; (2) slight improvement in the success rate for the Primary School Certificate which rose from 65.8% in 2019 (including 63.1% for girls) to 65.9% in 2020 (including 63.9% for girls ); and (3) drop in the primary completion rate by 1.4 percentage points between 2018/2019 and 2019/2020. However, the completion rate for girls remained higher than that for boys over the period. The downward trend observed in the indicators is explained through factors exogenous to the education system (security and health crises) which caused a shutdown or a slowdown of public services in 2020. Despite these difficulties, the education system has shown great resilience due to the technical and financial partners’ support and the government’s constant mobilization.