Haiti: Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper; IMF Country Report 08/115 ...

CHAPTER 6
Pillar 2: Human Development – Priority Accorded to Basic Social Services
1. EDUCATION AND TRAINING
POLICY TO REORGANIZE EDUCATIONAL SUPPLY IN FAVOR OF POOR STUDENTS
101 The supply of education is inadequate at all instructional levels. The situation is particularly
critical in rural areas. There are 23 communal sections that have no school at all, and 145 (in
2007) that have no public school. According to 2004 data from the IHSI, the number of children
under the age of 5 is estimated at 935,000, of whom 339,800, or 36.34 percent, are not covered by
the system in place. In primary school, the number of children ages 6 to 12 and not enrolled is
roughly 558,163, or 37.7 percent of the school-age population, with a very high degree of
concentration (463,163) in rural areas.
102 Out of the 122,311 students admitted to secondary school in 2004, only 81,709, or 66.8 percent of
those accepted or 18 percent of the initial cohort, were able to receive secondary schooling owing
to the limited capacity to accommodate students at this instructional level. Quite apart from the
existing group of those who have already completed secondary school and been unable to find a
space in the university, an additional 15,500 were admitted in 2004. In the final year of secondary
school, the State university was able to take in 2,300 students from this class, while roughly
double that number found spots in private institutions. Unmet demand is thus on the order of
8,600 students, or 55.5 percent of the total student count seeking higher and university education,
and this just for the academic year beginning in 2004 alone.
103 More and more youths currently in school are asking for access to vocational training. The
majority of the supply of such training is private and spaces are limited, particularly in urban
areas where the network of agricultural training facilities, which are unequally distributed
throughout the country, ceased to be operational a number of years ago owing to insufficient
funding.
Objectives
104 The targeted objectives are the following:
• Reducing the existing disparities between geographical departments and between urban
and rural areas as regards the distribution of available schooling at the preschool and
basic education levels
• Ensuring that, by 2010, all 565 commune-level sections have at least one public school
covering 6 grades
• Introducing a basic education school (1st and 2nd cycles) that better addresses learners’
needs, in particular those of older students
• Making vocational education more accessible to a greater number of young people
• Reducing average tuition costs for these instructional levels.
Strategic lines
• Creation and outfitting of new seated spaces in preschool
• Creation and outfitting of new seated spaces in primary school
• Scholarship programs or poor children in all commune-level sections
• Resumed operation of the EMAs and CFPAs
• Transformation of four nonpublic vocational training centers into reference centers.
POLICY ON REQUALIFICATION OF INSTRUCTIONAL STAFF AND SCHOOL
DIRECTORS
105 The output of the system is quite low. At the basic level (1st and 2nd cycles) it is on the order of
43 percent owing to the high grade repetition rates (29 percent in the first year) and dropout rates
(6 percent) recorded for every year of studies. At the secondary school level, output is even
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