Solidar Suisse wants to make it a model of academic success and social cohesion through the promotion of interculturality and non-violent communication.
“Reinforce the capacities of bilingual classroom teachers and school principals in the didactics of bilingual education” is the aim of the second training session for bilingual education players from different regions of Burkina Faso: Centre-Nord, Centre-Ouest, Hauts-Bassins and Sud-Ouest. The bilingual schools concerned come from the dioceses of Kaya, Ouahigouya, Koudougou, Bobo Dioulasso and Diébougou.
The official opening ceremony was held on Wednesday, July 27, 2022 at the Centre de formation pédagogique et pastorale in Saaba. Over a period of 1 month, 35 teachers from the bilingual schools of the Secrétariat national de l’éducation catholique (SNEC) will learn about the pedagogical approaches of bilingual education through various modules such as :
- Interculturality and non-violent communication ;
- Talk-read-write in national languages,
- Reading-expression-comprehension-phonetics ;
- Grammar of the national language ;
- Mathematics in national languages ;
- bservation sciences in national languages ;
- History in national languages ;
- Geography in national languages, etc.
Focus on Solidar Suisse Burkina Faso’s interest in bi-lingual education
As a reminder, this training is part of the project ” Strengthening the quality of bi-plurilingual education through interculturality and non-violent communication and ensuring favorable conditions for the education/training of pupils and adolescents in Burkina Faso “. Planned for the period 2021-2024, this project is financed by Solidar Suisse and implemented in partnership with the Secrétariat national de l’éducation catholique (SNEC). The project’s areas of intervention include: providing bilingual schools with didactic and pedagogical materials, building the capacity of teachers and pedagogical supervisors in bi-plurilingual education, monitoring and advising teachers, advocating in favor of bilingual schools, etc.
The major innovation of this 2021-2024 phase is the integration of a module on “interculturality and non-violent communication”, the ultimate aim of which is to inculcate values of peace and social cohesion in schools and turn cultural differences into elements of richness to strengthen living together, according to Mr. Yamba Louis NIKIEMA, Education Technical Advisor at Solidar Suisse Burkina Faso.
On the occasion of the opening ceremony of the 2022 training session, Abbé Hyacinthe OUEDRAOGO, National Secretary of Catholic Education in Burkina Faso, thanked Solidar Suisse for its passion for bilingual education and its sustainable support. In his words: “In Burkina Faso, only 2.2% of the population use French as their main language of communication. However, it is the main language of education for children. However, 97.6% of the population uses national languages as the language of communication”.
Moreover, it is clear from his comments that the countries that educate in foreign languages are the poorest on the planet (including French-speaking African countries). Hence the importance of promoting bilingual education in a context of globalization that tends towards the dictatorship of so-called international languages. To this end, he encouraged participants to apply themselves during the training to better teach the knowledge acquired by pupils over the course of the 05 years of schooling in bilingual schools. All of which will contribute to achieving Solidar Suisse’s objectives through the promotion of bi-plurilingual education:
- Cultivate not only positive school results, but also attitudes conducive to cohesion among students and within their respective families in order to deal with the inter-community crisis resulting from the security crisis in Burkina Faso;
- Make bi-plurilingual education in schools (SNEC) a model of academic success and social cohesion through the promotion of interculturality and non-violent communication, to be popularized in the education system at national level.
