Education in Chad

Education in Chad is challenging due to the nation's dispersed population and a certain degree of reluctance on the part of parents to send their children to school.

Although attendance is compulsory, Only 68% of boys continue their education past primary school, and over half of the population is Illiterate.

[6] The establishment of Protestant mission schools in southern Chad in the 1814 marked the beginning of Western education in the country.

[7] At independence in 1960, the government established a goal of universal primary education, and school attendance was made compulsory until age twelve.

In Chad, modern Islamic secondary schools have included the Ecole Mohamed Illech, founded in 1918.

Model schools discarded the French-style classical education in favor of a new approach that taught children to reinterpret and modify their social and economic environment.

Lack of security in vast parts of the country has made it difficult to send teachers to their posts and to maintain them there.

In addition, the mobility occasioned by the war has created havoc with attempts to get children to attend classes regularly.

Because of years of civil strife, however, local communities had assumed many of the ministry's functions, including the construction and maintenance of schools, and payment of teachers' salaries.

[7] However, the government is unable to adequately fund education, and parents in practice make significant payments for tuition and teacher salaries.

The largest number went to France (30 percent in the academic year 1966-67, for example), but some Chadians studied in Belgium, Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, and Congo.

The imposition of compulsory yondo rites greatly disrupted the following school year, but after the overthrow of Tombalbaye and the end of the authenticité movement, the university continued to grow.

The Chadian Civil War curtailed university activities in 1979 and 1980, when the first and second battles of N'Djamena threatened facilities and students alike.

[7] In addition to the university, higher learning in Chad included one advanced teacher—training institution, the Ecole Normale Supérieure, which trained secondary-school instructors.

They either could enter a first level, three-year programme (première cycle) at a collège (after which they could transfer to one of the four technical schools) or they could enroll directly in one of the lycées for a six-year program.

Students completing the three-year première cycle received professional aptitude certificates; those finishing the entire six-year course were awarded diplomas.