Democratizing Education in Dakar: Lessons from a Biographical Survey

Résumé 0

The issue of the democratization of education has been widely studied in developed countries. It has however not aroused much interest in Francophone Africa, mainly because of a measurement problem: the data produced by Education systems do not include information about the characteristics of the pupils and their families while household surveys are hardly comparable. This issue is investigated here using data from a biographic survey conducted in 2001. Comparing the schooling careers of men and women belonging to different generations depending on their social background shows that school has opened up to a larger public, although studying beyond primary school remains problematic, particularly for the groups most affected by the persistent social and economic crisis. The clear increase in female schooling at both primary and secondary levels does not however enable them to catch up completely with the boys.