Meet Mr. Baboucarr Buoy, a Bureaucrat Who Changed Education in His Country Mr. Baboucarr Buoy is the Permanent Secretary in the Gambian Ministry of Education that has overseen improvements in the education sector for over a decade. On May 4, 2012, Mr. Bouy received the World Bank’s Jit Gill Memorial Award for Outstanding Public Service for his “leadership, commitment and integrity”. During my recent visit to Gambia, I had the opportunity to listen to his reflections on his role as a key player in Gambia’s education sector. Tall, gentle, and serious, Mr. Buoy started his career in education as a mathematics high school teacher, followed by higher studies in the United Kingdom. In 1994, Mr. Buoy joined the Gambian bureaucracy as a Senior Planner in the Ministry of Education. He recalls his shock during these early years, when he realized there were few writing instruments, no paper, and no electricity. He knew that he had to provide his staff with the basics to help them take the sector forward before he could address the needs of children in his country, Then, under the guidance of the then Minister of Education, Mr. Buoy began a new phase in Gambia’s efforts to improve education for the children of Gambia. Influenced by the Dakar Framework for Action (PDF), Mr. Bouy started to develop and strengthen national visions and plans for actions. He began the task of building a strong senior management team in the Ministry of Education to support these initiatives. Gambia joins the Global Partnership for Education Gambia was one of the first countries to join the Global Partnership for Education. Mr. Buoy and his team developed Gambia’s Education Sector Strategic Plan to both guide the work of the Ministry and organize support received from donors. Gambia’s first Plan, developed in 1996, showed the world where the country wanted to go in education and how it wanted to get there. Mr. Buoy recalls it was not easy to introduce this new culture of support to donors. While most donors agreed to coordinate and complement their support for the different interventions listed in the Plan, for others this was a difficult proposition. To those in the latter group, he gently closed the door to working in Gambia. The new culture and structure for donor support has evolved over time and was facilitated by a strong donor coordination unit in the Ministry of Education. Under Mr. Buoy’s commitment and leadership, this partnership now includes consistent participation from donors, civil society and more recently, teacher unions. Strong results: More money, more classrooms and more children completing school Financed by development partners including the Global Partnership, there are significantly more schools that dot the long narrow landscape of The Gambia. Over the last three years 252 new classrooms have been built with GPE funds to benefit about 10,000 students. The primary school completion rate is 70% which is higher than the average of 67% for sub-Saharan countries (Gambia Education Country Status Report. 2010). More importantly, Gambia’s own expenditure on education, which was a mere 9% of its budget in 2006, is now nearly 20%. Only 1.9% of the country’s GDP went into education in 2006, it is now 4.2% (The Gambia, Education Finance Brief: Directorate of Planning, Policy Analysis, Research & Budgeting, March 2012) So, what were the crucial changes that helped the Gambia in its education progress? Donkey carts: In the program supported by the Global Partnership, donkey carts were given to communities that lived far away from school. Through the “Horse and Donkeys Association” 81 donkeys were purchased and supplied for children that had to walk about 3 kilometers to reach a school. Before carts were given, head teachers, school management committees and Learner Welfare Committee members were told how to use the donkey carts. Teachers for remote schools: Many schools in The Gambia are remote, hard to reach and unattractive for teachers. With special hardship allowances, good teachers were appointed and motivated to go to these schools. In this way, children in these schools now receive instruction from qualified and experienced teachers. Teacher training: Teachers, especially those that are women, find it difficult to travel to towns to receive teacher training. E-learning programs were introduced to enable about 2,500 teachers with just a primary education to obtain a secondary school certificate. Teachers also receive training for instructing children with disabilities. Critical challenge that remains: Mr. Buoy realized very early on that children were not learning in Gambian schools. He introduced systematic testing of student learning and welcomed several new initiatives to help transform teaching and learning in classrooms. But these initiatives have not yet produced the expected results. The next program that is being prepared will incorporate lessons learned from these various initiatives and also introduce instruction in local languages in early grades. The Performance Management System introduced recently will be fine-tuned to improve teachers’ skill and accountability for children’s learning. Stay tuned for more changes and improvements in the years to come. Provide a comment below. Get involved and join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter on helping children learn and grow.