Policy Brief
An Overview of Existing Policies and Practice on Re-entry Policies for Teenage Mothers in Senegal
Introduction
This policy brief highlights existing policies and practice on school re-entry for teenage mothers in Senegal. It draws from the country research and report on school re-entry policies for teenage mothers in Senegal. It looks at existing institutional frameworks – including laws, policies and guidelines. It then examines the functionality of existing institutional frameworks. Based on this analysis, the document concludes by providing recommendations that ought to be considered to bring the school re-entry policy landscape on teenage mothers in Senegal to comply with agreed international norms and standards in upholding the educational rights of teenage mothers.
Country Context –Organization of The Education Sector
In Senegal, according to the 2001 Constitution, the State must ensure that every child, both boys and girls, enjoy the right and access to national education. However, due to limited resources, that law is hardly enforced in some areas of the country1. As of 2018, education expenditures represented 4.8% of the country’s GDP2. Articles 21 and 22 of the Constitution recognize the capacity of religious institutions to deliver education3. Therefore, apart from the conventional education system, there is a growing number of religious institutions to deliver both Koranic studies as well as official conventional education (as designed by the national educational institutions). Nevertheless, most Koranic schools or daaras have a full-time education system that does not allow for children to attend conventional education4.
There is little data on the number of children attending that exclusive form of Koranic education—called locally talibes. UNESCO’s census of 20135 counted 8245 daaras in which 170,000 talibés resided, which would represent approximately 50% of children that are not attending primary school. Because talibés are almost exclusively of male sex, and also because there is limited data on talibés in age of attending secondary school, they have been mentioned in this policy brief purely for categorization purposes of how the education system is structured in Senegal.
The Senegalese education system is organized into 4 segments: pre-primary (between ages 1 and 6), primary (6 years between age 6 and 11), lower secondary (4 years
1 UNESCO WORLD DATA on Education, 2010/2011
2 Ibid (1)
3 UNESCO, 2011
between age 12 and 15) and higher secondary (3 years between age 16 and 18)6. This policy brief only focuses on the secondary education category, which lasts 7 years, and predominantly has children between age 12 and age 18.
Teenage Pregnancy –Trends, Drivers and Policy Responses
Between 2011 and 2014, 1971 teenage pregnancies were recorded in Senegalese schools. Most of those pregnancies were recorded in the Southern regions of Sedhiou and Zinguinchor, which accounted respectively for 30% and 19% of those teenage pregnancies7. Next to those come the regions of Kolda (9%), Matam (6%), Thies (6%) and SaintLouis (5%). In Dakar, that number is between 2% and 4%.
It also appears that younger teenage girls are more likely to get pregnant than older teenage counterparts. For instance, 71.9% of the pregnant teenage school girls between 2011 and 2014 were attending lower secondary school, where the age range is between 12 and 15. The remaining 28.1% of those girls were in higher secondary school, where the age range varies between 16 and 19.
Teenage pregnancies in schools increase girls’ vulnerability and affect their ability to pursue their education. With dropout rates already at a national high rate of 9.8%8, teenage pregnancies add an unnecessary burden for those students to maintain themselves in schools.
Several initiatives exist, led mostly by teachers, school officials and NGO members, which aim to reduce the number of girls abandoning their education due to early pregnancies. 54.43% of teenage mothers were not able to continue with their education after giving birth; 39.39% had to retake the school year and an estimated 15.16% continued with their education within the same school year. This study established that in spite of existing policies, some pregnant girls still drop out of school because they are expelled by school officials, or forced to stay home by parents or husbands.
Early marriages are also a common cause for early pregnancies for schoolgirls. Between 2011 and 2014, 39.2% of the pregnant schoolgirls were married9. The Constitution of
4 AFD, Ecoles coraniques et éducation pour tous: quels partenariats possibles, Mali, Niger, Senegal, S. Lozneanu, P. Humeau, 2014
5 UNESCO World Data on Education, 2013
6 Global Partnership for Education, Senegal Homepage, 2021 (https://www.globalpartnership.org/where-we-work/senegal)
7 Ibid (1)
8 République du Sénégal, DRPE, rapport national sur l’éducation, p.58
9 Ibid (1).
Senegal permits girls below 18 years to get married, as stipulated in Article 111 of the Family Code10: “marriage can only be contracted between a man over the age of 18 and a woman over the age of 16”. However, between 16 and 17, a girl in Senegal is still within the age bracket of attending secondary high school. This means that many married girls attend school, and can easily get pregnant, which might reduce their chances of ever resuming their education.
Existing Policies and Legal Frameworks for School Re-entry
In Senegal, the primary policy regulating the education of the youth is the Ten-Years Law, titled Law 2004-37 modifying and supplementing the National Education Orientation Law 91-22 of 16 February 1991. This law was adopted on December 15th, 2004, following the “Ten-Year Education and Training Programme” of 200011. Article 1 of the Law 2004-37 stipulates that : “Schooling is compulsory for all children of both sexes between the ages of 6 and 16” and further states that “The state has the obligation to maintain within the school system children aged 6 to 16 years old”12. Therefore, this law makes it de facto illegal to terminate the education of girl in that age range on the grounds of pregnancy.
While the State’s obligation is to ensure access to free education for all children between 6 and 16, the community has to ensure that children are enrolled in schools. Most school officials are aware of the law, but most students are unaware of it. Children’s lack of awareness usually extends to parents’ own lack of awareness, and by extension, to the uneducated members of the community at large. The net effect is that most people are unlikely to abide by that law, and will either pull out their pregnant daughters from school or simply not enrol them into schools after delivery.
The Ten-Years Law was adopted in 2004, but there was a level of confusion and ambiguity on how it should be implemented, especially with regard to schoolgirls’ pregnancies. Many schools continued to expel girls on the grounds of pregnancy. To clear those ambiguities and to ensure protection for pregnant schoolgirls, a circular was released for the implementation of the Ten-Years Law in 2007. Circular n° 004379/ME/SG/DEMSG/DAJLD on the Management of Student Marriages and Pregnancies in Schools13, was released on October 11th, 2007 to eliminate
any confusion or ambiguities on handling teenage schoolgirls’ pregnancies.
The Circular directs that “Pregnant students are suspended from school until delivery for safety reasons. The state of pregnancy must first be duly established by a doctor recognized and approved by the State. Reinstatement in the school is based on the presentation of a medical certificate of aptitude to resume classes”. This means that the pregnant student’s education cannot be terminated due to her pregnancy.
Ostensibly for the protection of the wellbeing of the pregnant schoolgirl and the baby-to-be, the girl is sent home upon submission of a pregnancy letter delivered by an accredited physician. The pregnant schoolgirl is then supposed to stay at home until after delivery, when it has become clear that her health is stable enough to allow her to return to school. She must then seek an accredited physician to officially certify that she is in a condition to resume her studies. Upon submission of the medical certificate, she can either re-enter the same school that she was in, or opt for a different school depending on her. The teenage mother has to retake the classes from the school year where she left, and therefore does not simply continue with her schooling, but repeats the grade within which her pregnancy happened.
The Ten-Years Law is in conformity with the international norms for children education rights. Article 28 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) stipulates that States must “make primary education compulsory and available for free to all14”. By making it compulsory for children between age 6 to 16 to have education, Senegal has extended the international norm to lower secondary school instead of limiting it to just primary school.
The Circular on the Management of Student Marriages and Pregnancies in Schools is a bit less aligned with international norms. Although it complies with the UNCRC’s explicit recognition of the right of pregnant schoolgirls to an acceptable education, hnjit is not aligned with the recommendations of the World Health Organization to reduce marriages before age 18, and to reduce pregnancies before age 2015.
The enforcement of the Ten-Years Law and of its subsequent Circular is also wanting. A critical review of the enforcement of the law indicates that its weakest link is its relative obscurity. Although the Circular was published in the Official
10 Article 111 du Code de la Famille, issu de la loi 72-61 du 12 Juin 1972, portant sur le Code de la Famille.
11 Programme Décennal de l’Education et de la Formation, PDEF.
12 Article 1 de la Loi 2004-37 du 15 Décembre 2004 modifiant et complétant le Loi d’Orientation de l’Education Nationale n° 91-22 du 16 Février 1991.
13 La Circulaire n° 004379/ME/SG/DEMSG/DAJLD du 11 Octobre 2007 portant sur la Gestion des mariages et des grossesses d’élèves dans les établissements scolaires.
14 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 27.
15 Preventing Early Pregnancy and Poor Reproductive Outcomes Among Adolescents in Developing Countries, WHO guidelines, available online at https://www.who.int/maternal_child_adolescent/documents/preventing_early_pregnancy/en/
Journal of the Government at the time of its release, it did not receive adequate media coverage, especially through channels directly accessible to school bodies and school officials.
Many stakeholders in the education sector, from national government levels and state institutions to the local level including teachers, school principals and school inspectors deplore the lack of popularization of the Circular, as well as its ambiguity.
Another missing feature of the Circular is its lack of financial and psychosocial support for the teenage mothers, which makes its application difficult when those teenage mothers
Recommendations
1. The Circular on girls’ re-entry policy should be distributed widely, and teachers and communities sensitized on its content. The public and private media should be involved in its dissemination, and sensitization and training workshops should be organized at the local level.
2. The content of the Circular should be revised. The government should reconsider the policy of requiring pregnant girls to discontinue their studies immediately it is discovered they are pregnant. Equally, the directive of obtaining a doctor’s certificate should be dropped from the policy guideline.
3. The government should seek to adopt the international best practice of keeping the age of majority, and
are poor and vulnerable, and simply do not have the means to go back to school. In fact, most of those active in the advocacy for the re-entry of teenage mothers in schools bemoan the lack of government assistance.
This lack of support to teenage mothers goes against some international norms that Senegal has committed itself to. Among those, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which Senegal ratified in 1978, and which confers on the government the responsibility to guarantee the safety and wellbeing of the children of adolescent mothers, in order to facilitate for them the completion of their education cycle16.
therefore acceptable age for marriage for girls, at 18. In all cases, girls should be sensitized to delay marriage as far as is practically possible so that they can complete their education.
4. The government should also accompany its policy of supporting teenage mothers with financial and psychosocial support to facilitate the rapid reintegration of these mothers into the education system.
5. The government should be open to supporting local initiatives in their efforts to advocate, sensitize, and support teenage mothers.
16 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, available at the UN Treaty Body Database, at https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/ TreatyBodyExternal/Treaty.aspx?CountryID=153&Lang=EN
Other Sources:
1. « Study on the situation of gender-based violence (GBV), in the academies of Sédhiou and Ziguinchor, implementation level of the circular letter on the management of pregnancies in schools and the Law of the 10 Years Compulsory Education », Sall, Ndeye Oumou Khairy, FAWE Sénégal, March 2018.
2. « National report on the education situation (RNSE) », Department of Educational Planning and Reform, Government of Senegal, 2018 Edition