Analyse du Sénégal (document en anglais)

1. Introduction and background

Senegal has about 12.4 million inhabitants of whom 42 percent live in urban areas and the population growth rate is 2.6 percent. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is produced by four main sectors of the economy as follows: - agriculture (19.8%); industry (23.5%); manufacturing (16.5%), and services (56.8 %), with respectively 1.9 %, 4.0%, 2.2%, and 5.4% growth rates as estimated by World Bank (2008). The Statistics department of Senegal has also put the GDP to be 5407.7 billion francs CFA in 2007. The average annual growth of the economy is estimated at about 4 percent with a GDP per capita of US$900 (2006 estimate) and inflation rate of about 2.2 percent.

French is the official language, which is also the main language of instruction in schools. In principle and by constitutional provision, Senegal guarantees equal access to education for all children, particularly primary education. Also, constitutionally, education is compulsory and free up to the age of 16. However, in practice, due to limited state resources the law is not fully enforced. The importance of education for all and resources allocated to the education sector have been well highlighted in the 2000 Dakar World Education Forum and the National documents especially PRSP, PDEF (Programme de Développement de l'éducation et de la formation), the regions and local development plans. The resource mobilization into the educational sector has been said to be critical in achieving the MDG of education for all by

2015.

In 1990 at the World Education for All Conference in Jomtien, Thailand, the World leaders focus on education for all with ambitious and wide-reaching goals by 2015. The Dakar Forum in 2000 reaffirmed the goals set by 2015 of education for all (EFA), stressing on direct approach to address the real problems and deficits as noted in attaining the goals of EFA.

While the 164 countries in the 2000 Dakar meeting stated the great progress has been made, they strongly urged for increased resources in order to achieve the goals of education for all by 2015. There is presumption that bigger educational expenditures and increased levels of inputs into the educational sector necessarily results to "better educational outcomes." Many take the public expenditure as the key policy instrument for attaining educational outcomes.

At the primary level in the supply of schooling, the public expenditure far exceeds that of non-governmental provision including private

2- Justification of the study

The relation between investment expenditure in the education sector and economic growth has been shown to be highly positive. Studies (Easterly and Rebelo, 1993; Dabla-Noris and

Matovu, 2002; Todd and Wolpin 2003) have shown education as a key factor for growth and poverty reduction. Bose et al. (2003) examining this relationship, conclude that investment in education is highly significant with a large magnitude - an increase of government investment in education relative to GDP results to an increase of real GDP per capita of 1.5 percentage points. Roberts (2003) has strongly argued that education is crucially important in improving the personal lot of individual, achieving income growth and poverty reduction. Much progress has been made towards universal primary education (UPE), with increasing raising rates of enrolment in primary education. The question is: is public expenditure on education effective, does it work? If yes, more resources should be allocated to education; and if not what are the factors adversely affecting the impact of public educational expenditure? It is, therefore, important to examine the relationship between education expenditures and outcomes to see what could be done to improve the educational outcomes with a given education expenditure.

2.1 Objective of the study

African countries have made significant advances in making education more accessible at the primary, secondary and tertiary educational levels with some countries more than others making significant improvements in education expenditure and outcomes. But the relation between resources and education outcomes is not yet clear. The relation seems to be very weak in some countries and do not exist in some, while strong in some countries, (Anyanwu and Erhijakpor, 2007). The relationship between expenditure and outcome is tenuous partly because there is no clear definition of outcome and even expenditure on education. While lessons can be drawn from countries that have achieved UPE at least quantitatively, it is important to examine countries that have not achieved UPE but are making great efforts to achieving that goal. More specifically the study examines the impact of education expenditures on the educational outcomes. Thus, the objective of the study is to examine the relationship between educational expenditure and the outcomes; and to ascertain what factors affect the outcomes.

Millennium Development Goals (MDG)

In this study, the outcome is on the widely known, rigorously studied and carefully monitored Millennium Development Goals with Goal Two being our focus. With the focus on the outcome as specified by the Target Three, that by 2015 Universal Primary Education (UPE) should be achieved - children everywhere, both boys and girls should complete a 'full course of primary schooling'. This educational goal poses a tremendous challenge as it is about all children everywhere, and in Senegal it relates to all Senegalese children in everywhere in the country. For lack of a better variable or measurement we concentrate on the enrolment rate and related variables such as completion rate, and dropout rate as the educational outcomes, despite the limitation of enrolment rate as a measurement of outcome.

3. Demand and supply

There are many factors affecting schooling. The supply side is related to infrastructure including school buildings and classrooms, school equipment and pedagogic materials, personnel and teachers, conducive school environment, etc. While demand factors include household characteristics, the level of income of the population and demographic characteristics with the level of infrastructure development of the country in general, etc. The main demand-side factors for the households sending their children to school include private cost to households, parental perceptions of the benefits to themselves and their children, and household income. Both on the supply and demand sides, much resource are required in creating and building the educational system and facilities such

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