Pigier Côte d’Ivoire: Overview of the Education Sector in Côte d’Ivoire

Interview with Jérémie N’Gouan, Head of Pigier Côte d’Ivoire

What is your evaluation of the education system in Côte d’Ivoire, and especially the higher education? What are the progresses that have been made so far and what needs to be done?

Higher education in Côte d’Ivoire comprises of two distinct sectors: the public sector, which is managed by the state, and the private sector. In the last few years, the private sector has become increasingly important to the extent that the number of graduates guided by the state in the institutions has increased. The state, having fewer seats in its establishments, has resorted to private institutions to support these graduates. To give you an idea: we had 45,000 graduates in 2011 in Côte d’Ivoire. There will be 100,000 in 2018, and we think we may reach about 220,000 graduates in 2025.

In 2025 we will have about 700,000 students in this country, including 400,000 in the private sector. Thus the private sphere complements the government action and the training provided in the public educational institutions. This sector must be up to the task so that it generates enough profit to be able to renew itself and be at the cutting edge.

Do you believe it is achievable? How do you think these private institutions will be up to the challenge and can hold all these people?

The private higher education institutions have a private contract to run a public service of the state. It is up to the state that has to create the regulatory framework for the exercise of the profession, to ensure that the future challenges are managed simultaneously by both the public and the private sector. We must reorganize the concessions of public services. We must better control the institutions and their exercise of the public services concession. Planning contracts must be signed with private institutions so that they can support the efforts of the state in education.

Is there a model to be exported overseas?

The current system is based on the orientation of all students. There must be a real thought to see if this can continue. And if this should continue, we must find out how parents could help a little more to finance the education of their children. To this end, we can consider the model that we have experienced with Milton Friedman in the United States in 1962: education vouchers, which have allowed Americans to solve a number of issues in education. This system would work as follows: a child receives a check, chooses the school of his choice and does his training. In addition to this education voucher, we can provide a loan system for higher education training. At this rate, the state cannot sustainably continue funding all the training without the help of parents or students.

We realize that it is very complicated for parents to choose from so many institutions: some are well-renowned, some are applying fairly strict guidelines, others are “schools for money”, etc.

The current system actually poses a problem; there is a need for transparency. We need to improve the governance of the system. We must ensure that parents are the real judges, the real consumers. If parents or children choose their school, the problem of poor quality schools will be set for itself. What makes the current system not work very well is that it is the state that guides children, so that children who have no choice are obliged to enroll in institutions even when they are not up to the task. It is therefore necessary to improve the governance of the system with greater transparency. We must also publish for example the performances of each school. We have a state exam that is passed in all institutions of Côte d’Ivoire, we can publish the results school by school so that parents can be aware of the best schools and can choose where to register their children.

Let’s get to your institution, how do you distinguish yourselves? How do you stand out? What makes you different?

We are different in quality. We try to ensure that the contract between the parents and us is respected: parents pay a school fee, we do our best to make our services equal to the fee paid. We also try to ensure that parents have a very good appreciation of our establishment, so that they will advise their children, sometimes even their grandchildren, to come to Pigier, because they know that at least in this place we deliver quality.

In addition, what sets us apart is not only the principles that I have just mentioned, but also a number of things: our quality of education, we have a very competent teaching staff, which is highly paid, and we are very demanding. We require our children to show certain rigor; our students cannot do anything they wish; we take sanctions against them. It may seem outdated, but we still have a governing board. We provide our students with a number of tools that allow them to access modernity: our center for digital documentation, our computer rooms and all the educational tools that go with it.

In fact, you were talking about teacher training, can you discuss it in more detail?

Concerning the teachers training, for three years we have been recruiting fifteen teachers each year. We bring them to the National Pedagogical Institute at the university, they are followed by teachers from the universities, then they join us as trainees for a probationary period of a year or two, and then they become incumbents. We aim to help some of them to pass all stages to achieve certification as university professors.

Can you tell us about the other advantages of your establishment in terms of technology and educational tools?

We aim for an unrestricted access to new technologies. We have several computer labs that are available to students, also during holidays and on Sundays. We have a digital documents center that is the first of its kind in Africa and it allows students to access all types of documents they need for their research and studies. We also have the 365 Microsoft Office system that allows each student to have a storage space and an email account as soon as he registers in our school to communicate with teachers. In addition, we have a system that enables teachers, at specific times, to supervise their students and the different subjects where they may have difficulties with.

You have a number of partnerships, can you talk a little bit about them? What are your plans in this regard?

Our goal for the next two years is to build a new campus in the North of Abidjan. We intend to invest a substantial amount to build a university that is expected to hold between 4,000 to 5,000 students. In this regard, we would like to be helped by partners: of course Pigier France, African universities in order to exchange students, but also universities from Asia and America, that can supervise us and help us. For example, there is a quite new project that we don’t know well yet, which is the teleconference. We hope to have the support of foreign universities to participate in teleconferences. There are distance education programs for which we intend to benefit from the knowledge of our partners to enhance the education of those who cannot always travel to come to Abidjan. We also have this vast new field, which is MOOCs. We plan to invest in MOOCs and we look forward to working with partners in this field. MOOCs are educational systems that allow students to have courses and pass exams remotely.

Indeed, sharing everything remotely is key to education, now in some countries we don’t even need to move, we can study at American universities without going there. What is your strategy for this particular sphere?

Our strategy on that will begin with Côte d’Ivoire and the sub-region. There is the construction of our campus, and we are also established in Gabon. We have the intention in the five coming years to open an establishment in each of the eight WAEMU (UEMOA) countries. In the coming days we will certainly establish ourselves in Yamoussoukro. It is obvious that these establishments will lead us to develop innovative teaching strategies. Because all courses will not be given on site, we’ll use new technologies to enable learners to reach knowledge remotely. We will use these new technologies to reduce our costs. If our costs go up, it is the parents who will pay. We need to reduce costs and to ensure that students who are in Yamoussoukro and Libreville can take advantage of a course taught in Abidjan. And, lastly, we must ensure that training is affordable for the majority.

WAEMU is a set of eight countries which includes Côte d’Ivoire, Benin, Togo, Niger, Mali, Senegal, Guinea Bissau and Burkina Faso. And there is a general regulation in these countries that is about to emerge. These countries implement also common policies related to agriculture, education etc. The implementation of the LMD for example has been proceeded by a WAEMU directive. Therefore, we intend to help the creation of this sub-regional set, by creating universities in each country. We have expertise today which we want to share with all these countries. But the purchasing power in Africa is very limited, so we will rely primarily on new technologies to ensure that the knowledge could be disseminated throughout the country.

Does Pigier Côte d’Ivoire belong to Pigier France?

Pigier Côte d’Ivoire is a franchise of Pigier France. Shareholders of Pigier Côte d’Ivoire are French and Ivorian. So we have a total autonomy. We also have a teaching responsibility of Pigier schools installed in sub-Saharan Africa. Pigier Côte d’Ivoire has a pedagogical responsibility towards Pigier Benin and Pigier Cameroon. On the other hand, Pigier Libreville is a branch of Pigier Côte d’Ivoire. It will be the same for schools that will be created in the other seven countries of the WAEMU.

Is it possible to know how soon you will be able to develop all of these institutions in the other countries? And then, what kind of partnership will you need for this foreign university?

I think it will take 5 years. Libreville is done, Gabon is on the way. Yamoussoukro is going to be opened in the coming days. For the other countries, we are given five years to cover the entire sub-region with our brand Pigier Côte d’Ivoire.

What is the biggest challenge of Pigier in terms of your strategy? If you had more money, what would you address in the first place?

What worries me most at the moment is that we can find a little more smoothness in the financial relationship with the state. It’s a problem, because we have a public service concession. For a student guided to Pigier for example, the state pays 300,000 francs a year, but we know that the training in privates schools is substantially more expensive, sometimes it exceeds two million a year. Now that the country’s financial situation improved, we would like the relationship with the state to be much more fluid in the financial terms, we need to be paid in order to invest. All the investments I’ve talked about mainly depend on our ability to fund them.

Secondly, we need funds for the training; I insist on that because if we do not have well-trained teachers, we cannot spread the knowledge. So we need well-trained teachers and that is why Pigier Côte d’Ivoire annually invests a lot of money in the training of its staff. Currently, all of our teachers are in training before school starts.

The other challenge is peace so that we can work quietly. And I think now we are on the right track. We have found peace again, each of the talents of this country can express themselves; they can contribute to the country’s rebuilding and make Côte d’Ivoire an emerging country.

Education is the key sector for the development of a country, it is the priority. What is your vision for the development of Côte d’Ivoire in the coming years? How do you see the economy? What is your personal vision?

The economy of this country is very solid and it will certainly grow. With all the beginnings we have, we see that the economy is revived. But we need concrete actions to be taken for the training of people. We also need Ivoirians to fully integrate the regional groupings into their culture and mentality. We often see young Ivoirians complaining as they have finished their education and they cannot find work. I think that more and more young Ivoirians must leave the country to work elsewhere, to see other experiences. Today you can participate in the advancement of your country even if you live in Tokyo or Honolulu. So Ivoirians must leave some of their traditions and habits that constrain them to participate in the development of their country only inside the country.

And conversely, it is also necessary that foreigners come to study here.

Exactly. I think that we will get rich if we send some of our students to study overseas. The great advantage of the LMD is that it is transferable; a student who studied here can continue in Colombia or China and a Chinese student should have no problems to come here. Our goal is to learn all the time and make the others come to enrich us or we would go to enrich ourselves overseas so that we contribute to the development of Côte d’Ivoire.

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