The Gambia and education: a success story.

• Author: Grey-Johnson, Crispin
• Position: Education Policy

Situated at the western bulge of Africa, The Gambia is 11,000 square kilometres in area and bordered on three sides by Senegal and on the west by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 1.4 million, its growth rate stands at 4.2 per cent and is among the highest in the world. Forty five per cent of the population are under 15 years old and over 65 per cent comprise young people for whom education and training services have to be provided. With a per capita income of only $320, it is classified among the least developed countries, a status which presents special challenges for the country's development.

In 1996, articulating its development strategy in a document entitled "Vision 2020: The Gambia Incorporated", the Government summarized its mission statement as follows:

"To transform The Gambia into a financial centre, tourist paradise, trading, export-oriented manufacturing nation, thriving on free market policies and a vibrant private sector, sustained by a well-educated, trained, skilled, healthy, self-reliant and enterprising population, and guaranteeing a well-balanced ecosystem and a decent standard of living for one and all..."

The Gambian Government acknowledged that without a "coherent and consistent" education and training policy and strategy, the objectives of Vision 2020 would not be attained unless supported by a deliberate policy of investing in those human capital resources required to produce, organize, mobilize and manage the development processes that will be indispensable in the twenty-first century. The education and health sectors therefore have a central place in Vision 2020.

Government education policies and programmes since then have been anchored in the Vision 2020 goals. The new education policy and action plan was formulated and laid great stress on: basic education (first 9 years); increasing access and quality; expansion of senior secondary education (years 10 to 12) to significantly improve transition rates; closing the gender gap; skills training; development of scientific and technological competencies; improvement of literacy and numeracy; and strengthening of higher education through the creation of a national university.

The provision of basic education is an important strategy for the attainment of the Jomtien goals (Third World Congress of Education International, Jomtien, Thailand, July 2001)--and indeed the Millennium Development Goals--of education for all by 2015.

The Gambia's objective is to provide at least nine years of progressive formal schooling of good quality to all Gambian children by the target year. Since that objective was set some five years ago, the gross enrolment ratio was taken up from 44 to 87 per cent, placing The Gambia above the average sub-Saharan African country, whose ratio currently stands at 69 per cent. If this pace is maintained, a 100-per-cent ratio could be reached in only a few years time, well before the target year of 2015.

The Policy and Action Plan had also targeted a transition rate from lower to upper basic education of 82 per cent by...