A primary school in a bombed-out building in Kanem Prefecture
Courtesy UNICEF (Maggie Murray-Lee)

In the late 1980s, primary education in Chad consisted of a six-year program leading to an elementary school certificate. In the south, most students began their studies at the age of six in the north, they tended to be somewhat older. With the exception of schools that followed experimental programs, the curriculum adhered to the French model. Courses included reading, writing, spelling, grammar, mathematics, history, geography, science, and drawing.

Primary-school enrollment for the 1986-87 school year was more than 300,000 students. There were 6,203 instructors teaching in 1,650 schools, but 10 percent of the instructors were in nonteaching positions, yielding a pupil-to-teacher ratio of about sixty to one. Only about 40 percent of all primary-school-aged children attended class, and attendance was much greater in the south than in the Sahel or in the northern parts of the country (see table 2, Appendix A). Approximately 2.8 percent of primaryschool children were enrolled in private schools, and most of these were in Roman Catholic mission schools concentrated in the south or near the capital.

Data as of December 1988