Run by the colonial administration, the teacher-training college offered the highest level of education girls could get in the areas of West Africa colonised by France.

[2] The pupils were girls and young women aged between thirteen and twenty, who were from a variety of West African countries.

[1]  In the first few years of the school's foundation, a large number of pupils attended from the southern colonies such as Dahomey and a few directly from Senegal.

The girls were only allowed to speak French to each other and wore school uniforms they had made themselves.

[6] The curriculum of the school was a colonial product, based on nineteenth-century French educational practice.