Support programme to implementation of the Education and Training Sector Plan (PSEF)

The development of Burkina Faso's education system has long been the subject of long-term planning. If the education system has experienced a significant increase in enrollment at all levels of lessons over the last 15 years, thus improving school coverage, this positive dynamic is still far from covering all the potential social demand expressed through the population school age.

Beyond school coverage to necessarily improve, it is mainly retention problems at different levels of education that must be tackled to achieve this. Taking into account this situation and for the development of its new development repository namely the National Economic and Social Development Plan over the period 2016 to 2020, Burkina Faso has renewed in July 2017, its sectoral planning for the period 2017–2030 with the perspective of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals in education and training.

Since education, technical education and vocational training are among the focal sectors of the 3rd Indicative Cooperation Program between the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and Burkina Faso, it has been agreed to provide support for the implementation of the PSEF over the 2018–2020 period through this programme. The logical framework and the objectives of this support are aligned with those of the PSEF. The support is articulated around two components namely:

A contribution to the trust account of the treasury (CAST): This component aims to support the implementation of the action plans of the Ministry of Education and Literacy based on the policies and guidelines and, according to the disbursement modalities defined in the Joint Financing Memorandum signed between the Government of Burkina Faso and CAST's technical and financial partners. CAST as a modality for funding education is a concrete response to the Paris Declaration commitments on aid alignment and effectiveness. It is integrated in the budget law in the form of a budget in revenue and expenditure isolated from the general budget. Beyond the terms of allocation of financial resources, the operation of CAST also promotes the sector approach to the Ministry of Education and Literacy and donors promoting political and technical dialogue on key sectoral and thematic monitoring sector performance.

Support for capacity building: this is support to the management of the education and training sector through information and communication technologies. It aims to improve the management of human resources and will also contribute to improving the monitoring of the evolution of the school curriculum of each student in all cycles through a unique identifier, as well as improving the quality of school statistics. Ultimately, the goal is to have an integrated platform to monitor student curricula, staff management and school statistics to improve the quality of information processing processes while avoiding human errors and to gain in terms of time and financial resources.

The implementation of the programme is not the subject of a specific management scheme. In terms of coordination, it is a question of aligning itself with the existing system at the national level. For this purpose, the Luxembourg Cooperation will participate actively in the steering and monitoring committee for the implementation of the PSEF.

It is mainly:

• the sectoral framework of dialogue which is the monitoring and evaluation committee of the PSEF;
• the partnership framework which organizes the dialogue between the government and the technical and financial partners of basic education;
• the joint monitoring mission, which carries out in-depth monitoring of the evolution of the basic and secondary education sector and formulates recommendations and guidelines for the efficient implementation of the action plan for the current year.