Principal, teacher training boosts student achievement

Yarri Dème, principal at the USAID-financed middle school in remote Salémata, discusses how he encouraged teachers and students to reach a high level of academic performance. Photo by R. Nyberg, USAID

Principal Yarri Dème is passionate about education.  For more than 20 years, Dème, 57, has worked in the education sector in Senegal, starting as a teacher in Thiès. Since 2006, he has been principal of a rural middle school in the village of Salémata near Senegal’s southern border with Guinea.  Through training provided under USAID’s middle school education project, Déme has been able to increase student success rates by almost 25% -- a figure almost unheard of in student achievement.

From his first day in Salémata, Dème faced a daunting task.  USAID had just built a rural middle school in a region where many students did not go to middle school because of the distance they would have to travel to the closest school.  When the school was built, it provided the first opportunity for many in that community to continue their education beyond the sixth grade.  Parents and students were so happy to have a middle school in their community that over 400 students enrolled. The new principal was faced with the challenges of meeting the needs of these students while at the same time addressing such issues as a dearth of material resources and how best to use untrained teachers.

USAID was able to support Dème through training to middle school principals and teachers in all 11 regions of Senegal.  Along with the other principals and teachers, Dème and his faculty profited from courses in managing the classroom; student-centered learning techniques; ethics and professional behaviour; and monitoring and evaluation. In all, USAID trained more than 7,600 teachers and middle school principals throughout the country.  “The training really helped me,” attests Dème, a father of six children aged five to 26. “It provided me with the knowledge of what it means to be a good principal, and gave me the tools to become one.”

Principal Dème and the teachers of Salémata Middle School have proven how training can impact student achievement.  Before the training of teachers and principals, the success rate of those students passing the 10th grade certificate in Salémata was 55.3%; today it stands at 77.7%.

However, USAID did not limit its contribution to training.  Recognizing the lack of material resources such as textbooks, the education project revised and updated math and science curricula and developed and printed new textbooks.  Through the President’s Africa Education Initiative, more than 500,000 new math and science textbooks were distributed to all middle schools in Senegal.

“We’re so grateful for these new books, and we are looking forward to the next round of training,” says Dème, referring to the training they are to receive in science experimentation and the use of the new science and math books.  “We won’t rest until we have a success rate of 100%.” 

At the rate he and his school are going, Principal Dème won’t have long to wait.