Amadé Windémi Gansonré, a teacher at Communal School B in Kaya, Burkina Faso, is giving his lesson in a classroom full of smiling pupils. The important innovation in this classroom lies in the fact that all 64 pupils of the CM2 (grade 5) class have a tablet in front of them.

Eleven-year-old Micheline Sawadogo is very happy to have her new tablet. "We started using the tablets in January 2023. The first day, we compared the contents of the tablet with our books. We saw right away that it was similar. My parents were excited to know that we had started using tablets at school. With the tablets, they will be able to save money on school books,” she explains

As part of the Emergency Education Plan in Burkina Faso funded by the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), UNICEF in partnership with the Ministry of Education implemented an experimental program to assess the contribution of digital assets – 2,500 tablets – to the education emergency response. Five regions have benefited from these tablets, namely Boucle du Mouhoun, Centre-Nord, Nord, Est and Sahel.

Justin Sawadogo, also 11 years old, is in the same class as Micheline. He is very happy to use this new tablet: "It is easier for me to read with the tablet. If I were to choose between tablets and books, I would choose the tablets.” Both Justin and Micheline saw their grades improve in the second quarter with the introduction of the tablet.

“This term, the children's results are better than in the first term. At the beginning of the year, out of 64 students, 21 had the class average. With the tablets that we received in January, we had 36 students who had the average during our second evaluation,” explains Amadé Windémi Gansonré, the class teacher.

In November 2022, 50 fifth grade teachers from the five selected regions were trained to use the tablets. This training enabled them to install and use the applications needed for the exam classes.

From geography, geometry and arithmetic to grammar, the students can find all the books in the syllabus on their tablet. In addition, the installation of the Office pack allows students to practice typing.

"The use of digital tablets is a necessity, not a luxury, because we are in the digital age and children need to be trained to fit in well in the digital world. I would like the tablets to be available for all children and that teachers receive the necessary training to accompany them,” advocates Amadé Windémi Gansonré.

Burkina Faso’s Emergency Education Plan has several components. In addition to the experimentation with tablets in some schools, a priority is the construction of additional classrooms to accommodate the growing number of internally displaced students (IDPs) from neighboring villages affected by the security crisis.

The city of Kaya currently has nearly 36,000 internally displaced children. In one class, there are more than 150 students.

This is the case for young Salif Sawadogo, a 14-year-old student in CM2 (grade 5) at Kouim-Kouli C school in Kaya. He comes from Ankounan, a village north of Kaya.

In 2019, after Salif lost his father during attacks by armed groups, he and his family came to stay with his uncle in Kaya. "When I started here, we studied under the trees before we had a tent as a classroom. Today, I am happy to have a well-built classroom. In the first term, I was second in the class with an average of 8.19 out of 10," says Salif with pride.

Three classrooms were built in 2022 to increase the capacity of the Kouim-Kouli C school, thanks to the support of UNICEF, which initially provided classroom tents to cope with the influx of IDPs in the early stages of the crisis.

But the investment in terms of classrooms is still insufficient. "In Kouim-Kouli C, out of 887 students, 771 are internally displaced. This shows the urgency of the situation,” explains Christophe Ouédraogo, Director of the school.

In Burkina Faso, as of March 2023, the National Council for Emergency Relief and Rehabilitation (CONASUR) reported 493,954 internally displaced persons, including 242,986 children aged 0–14, in the Centre-Nord region. Many of these children were forced to leave school because of the closure of schools in areas affected by the security crisis.

The Emergency Plan for Education aims to ensure access to and continuity of education for 170,000 girls and boys living in crisis-affected communities in six regions: Boucle du Mouhoun, Centre-Nord, Nord, Est, Centre-Est and Sahel.

Thanks to the financial support of GPE, UNICEF in partnership with the government has built 229 classrooms including 40 classrooms in the Centre-Nord region.

The funding has also made it possible to provide the education system with 140 classroom tents, bringing the number of spaces created to 369 classrooms, allowing 22,140 children, including 11,105 girls, to benefit from quality education in improved conditions.