The three enthusiastic but tired teachers at my local kindergarten are more than happy to have me come on Friday mornings to do health-related activities with the kids and give the teachers a little break.
After kindergarten, you’ll be invited to start at the primary school where you will most likely stay for six years. Here, you’ll mostly only be learning French or Arabic, though math, science and geography may also be included in your classes in small sections.
As the country is overwhelmingly Muslim, many students opt to learn Arabic as many facets of society revolve around Islam. It is considered important to be able to read the Quran and to understand religious texts. Koranic schools are the other school systems in Senegal that teach only the Quranic texts and religious studies.
You’ll be taking a test every year now before the beginning of school to see if you have acquired the adequate education to move on to the next grade. As the school system is set up as a pass or fail, you may have to repeat grades one or two times in order to move into the next grade. You’re graded on a scale of twenty, just like the French system. Your progress may be affected by the fact that the harvest was late and you needed to help in the fields until mid-December, so you fall behind in your studies. Or maybe your mom has been sick and you need to stay home to help with your little siblings. You end up staying home for many days in a row and when you show up to school again, your teachers send you home because you missed too many days. Now you can’t start again until next year. While school attendance is technically compulsory through the second-grade level of primary school, the government has little to no oversight or ability to enforce this.
