Written by Fabiola Lara (Save the Children) and Pape Sow (Executive Assistant to the Commissioner for Human Development and Social Affairs at the Economic Community of West African States, formerly Save the Children)

Many roads as of late seem to start at the onset of COVID-19 but this one starts much earlier. In March 2019, Save the Children led a Ready to Learn (formerly ELM)[1] training for Save the Children staff and Ministry of Education inspectors in Dakar, Senegal. One year later, COVID-19 was upon us and, while we were all thinking about what future lies ahead for us, we were especially concerned for young children, the “littlest” ones, and how the pandemic would impact future learning outcomes and opportunities for quality pre-primary education.

Recognizing the impact that pre-primary education has on future grades and lifelong learning, in March 2021, through a World Bank-funded project known as Investing in the Early Years for Human Development Project in Senegal (PIPADHS), Save the Children, in close collaboration with the Government of Senegal, set out to revise the national pre-primary curriculum for all three levels of pre-primary – petite section, moyenne section, and grande section. This project focused on children ages 3-5 years old, reaching a total of 122,352 children (16.3% of the general school-aged population, with young girls representing 49.8%). It was a massive undertaking, as the last time that the pre-primary curriculum had been revised was in 2008.

As part of the curriculum revision process, a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis was completed early on to identify priorities for the revision and ways to make the curriculum responsive to present-day global challenges, as well as Senegalese society. A benchmarking study[2] was then completed to assess curricula from countries in the Africa region and to understand regional pre-primary priorities. The study outlined commonalities in curricula across Ghana, Rwanda, Cameroon, Ethiopia, and Tanzania. A key finding of this study was that, while these five countries had many differences, the following were central themes. The curricula were:

Competency-based. This means that the curricula are designed with the goal to develop general or specific competencies among children – in some cases, these competencies are cross-cutting across various levels of education.
Focused on various learning domains. These include literacy, numeracy, social-emotional development, etc. Some are holistic in nature (i.e. not only focusing on ‘academic’ domains) but others have more narrowly defined domains such as science and technology.
Structured around different themes or topics. These include topics such as “me and my family”, “the world around me”, “my country”, etc.
Standard-based. They include specific achievement standards for the children from each age group.
Inclusive of a detailed list of activities. This offers support to teachers in order to help children achieve standards outlined.
Inclusive of guidance around schedule and timing. The curricula contain an indication of how much time should be allocated to each theme, how long the periods should be, etc.
Inclusive of assessment guidance. The curricula provide some guidance around child assessment.

Soon after, a series of workshops were conducted to define the new learning domains and format of the newly-revised curriculum across the three levels of preprimary. Technical teams were established to work on the different sections of the curriculum according to the following new learning domains: Language and Literacy, Mathematics, Discovery of the World, Social-Emotional Development and Overall Well-Being, Psychomotor Development, and the Arts. Save the Children’s two evidence-based technical approaches, Ready to Learn[3] and Social Emotional Learning Foundations (SELF), were integrated as part of the revision process. Ready to Learn provides caregivers and teachers with guidance on how to support the development of foundational emergent literacy and math skills among young children (ages 3-6 years) while SELF focuses on promoting social engagement, self-management, and emotional awareness in young children.

Some key milestones of the project included:

From May 2021 to August 2021, the new set of learning domains were proposed and refined, development of technical materials for all three preprimary levels was completed, and objectives for pilot testing of portions of new curriculum was finalized.
From November to December 2021, Ministry Inspectors participated in a training of trainers (ToT) led by Save the Children based on the new curriculum. Following the ToT, teachers in three regions of Senegal (Fatick, Saint-Louis, and Kolda) received training from Ministry Inspectors in preparation for the “mini-pilot.”
On December 2021, a “mini-pilot” was conducted to test different portions of the curriculum – mainly language and literacy as well as mathematics as these were the two areas that were identified as lowest achieving in learning outcomes for preprimary children.
From March 2022 to April 2022, adaptations were made to the curriculum materials to include lessons learned from the “mini-pilot” and more finalized versions of the curricula were completed for further technical review.

Feedback from the “mini-pilot” was promising – the materials were well received by teachers but further modifications were identified. Upon delivering the curriculum in April 2022, the Ministry of Education and Save the Children had discussions on conditions for successful implementation going forward:

Need for effective leadership that is capable of transformation and supported by professionals driving a social and political demand for change. This includes capacity building activities in all areas to ensure adequate planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the progress of the desired change.
Adopt a system approach that not only favors learners and the classroom but also integrates essential contributions of the school, inspections, training institutions, the Education, communities, and families.
Real change is based on rigorous planning and implementation, a solid database, effective evaluation and a continuous learning system. This means not only creating the possibility of influencing the content of the strategies proposed but also facilitating conditions conducive to their gradual up-take. An evaluation of the new curriculum after two years of scaling up and the lessons learned from this exercise will guide the consolidation and sustainability of the transformation system and enable us to verify our hypotheses of change.
Finally, increase provision of the necessary resources for successful implementation of the desired changes. All changes have a cost. It will be important to rigorously evaluate them and ensure that the necessary resources are put in place at each phase of the change implementation process.

Currently, the Department of Preschool Education (DEPS) is leading further revisions to the preprimary curriculum across the three levels and last month, teachers were trained on the new curriculum to be implemented in the following seven of the 14 regions of Senegal: Matam, Tambacounda, Kolda, Fatick, Kaolack, Kaffrine, and Diourbel. The implementation of the new curriculum is expected to produce critical insights on what is working and how the revised curriculum can be improved to further address the needs of children. This is a pivotal moment to shape future generations of children in Senegal and to provide them with the skills they need to thrive as they progress through the school system and beyond into adulthood.

[1] Save the Children. 2018. Ready to Learn: Common approaches. Retrieved from: https://resourcecentre.savethechildren.net/pdf/ready-to-learn-2-pager.pdf/

[2] Chakhaia, Lela and Abimpaye, Monique. 2021. Overview of Pre-primary Curricula in Selected Countries in Sub-Saharan. Save the Children US: Washington, D.C.

[3] Amente, A., Yenew, A., Borisova, I., Dowd, A. J., Pisani, L., Dang, S., & Anís, K. (2017). Save the Children’s Emergent Literacy and Mathematics Initiative: Supporting Educators’ and Parents’ Efforts to Improve Young Children’s School Readiness. YC Young Children, 72(4), 31-34.