LIBREVILLE, GABON: Curriculum renewal

Participants at the seminar/workshop in Libreville, Gabon

From 23 to 28 October 2000 a seminar/workshop took place in Libreville, Gabon, on the theme of: ‘The policy of curriculum renewal, the process of curriculum development, local realities and the challenges of the twenty-first century’. This regional seminar was aimed at capacity building for the French-speaking countries of Sub-Saharan Africa.

The seminar resulted in high-lighting two important requirements:

· The need to establish a list of the problems besetting the education systems in the participating Member States;

· The need to identify various existing solutions launched through reform policies to combat these problems.

Organized jointly by the Ministry of National Education of Gabon and the International Bureau of Education, the workshop brought together fifty participants, all of them curriculum experts, from nine countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Gabon, Mali, Senegal and Togo. Each participating country described the present situation with regard to the reform of its education system and curriculum development.

To initiate the discussions, four thematic lectures were delivered on the following themes:

· Educational policies and curriculum reform by Mohamed Radi;

· Linking educational policies, curricula and textbooks: teaching universal values by John Aglo;

· The relationship between the use of national languages and renewing national cultures by José Marin;

· The present situation of curriculum development by Souleymane N’Diaye,.

The discussions that followed concentrated on identifying the needs for curriculum reform in these countries. The meeting contributed to reinforcing networking in the field of curriculum development and therefore to improving the quality of education systems in the region.

A final report of the meeting is in preparation in French and will be published at the beginning of 2001 (see page 2).

Further information is available from: John Aglo, IBE; telephone: +41.22.917.78.20; fax: +41.22.917.78.01; E-mail: john.aglo@ibe.unesco.org