The Collège Multilingue Spécifique (CMS) is the 3rd level of bilingual education, a pedagogical innovation designed by Burkinabe researchers and practitioners with technical and financial support from Solidar Suisse and its partners. CMSs are public general secondary schools that take into account specific teaching of national languages, production activities and culture, in addition to traditional teaching activities.
In fact, from a cognitive point of view, pupils from SMCs are able to continue their secondary education in traditional high schools and go on to university, while exercising their skills in the fields of culture, production and national languages.
Objectives
The CMS was created to prevent bilingual school leavers from ending up in conventional post-primary education, where all the specific content acquired and valued since 3E is totally ignored. The aim is to :
- Acquire the entire content of traditional secondary education from 6th to 3rd grade;
- Promoting functional multilingualism;
- Promoting cultural values;
- To ensure the implementation of teaching-learning activities in connection with production activities;
- Ensure students’ internal and external effectiveness.
Prerequisites for implementing the approach
- Be located in a community with several bilingual elementary school;
- Adequate infrastructure for production and cultural activities.
Implementation process
- Identifying the location of EPB concentration ;
- Contacting the ministry responsible for post-primary education;
- Social negotiation in the form of prospecting missions;
- Training players in bi-plurilingual specificities (teachers in national languages, resource persons for production and cultural activities).
Stakeholders in the implementation
- The Ministry of Education, through its central and decentralized technical departments;
- Secondary school teachers;
- Parents’ Association ;
- Resource people involved in cultural activities and production;
- Solidar Suisse for technical support.
Direct beneficiaries
- Pupils from bilingual elementary school who have passed the CEP and/or the 6è entrance exam for lycées and collèges.
Indirect beneficiaries
- CMS school administration;
- CMS faculty;
- Parents;
- Local technical structures concerned by the specific features of CMS.
Benefits
- A harmonious welcome for students from EPBs;
- Community involvement;
- Community enthusiasm for the CMS;
- Cultural development;
- The spirit of pre-professionalization;
- Registering the CMS as an experimental facility;
- Good assimilation of knowledge in English;
- Production activities carried out independently by CMS students (market gardening, fattening, singing and dancing);
- Operation of the production facility, performance of the cultural troupe.
