Presentation of the

Tierno Sileymaani BAAL School Group

The Tierno Sileymaani BAAL School Group (GSTS BAAL) is a school covering the three phases. It is equipped to accommodate 800 students, including:

• 300 in primary phase (1st to 5th Grades for children 6 to 13 years)
• 350 in lower secondary (6th to 8th Grades for youth 12 to 18 years)
• 150 in higher secondary (9th to 12th Grades for youth 16 to 21 years)

The school staff counts 30 teachers including 7 for the primary phase and 23 for lower and upper secondary phases and 10 ancillary personnel. There are 557 students.

 The GSTS BAAL is Guédiawaye on the outskirts of Dakar, the capital of Senegal. It is administratively located in the Sam-Notary District Municipality. But from a sociological point of view, his students come from the township of Medina District Gounass; the lack of facilities in this town actually make it into a "district".

The physical environment and socio-economic context of the school's students are certainly unfavourable... The school faces the Gounass District Municipality which provides more than 50 percent of its students. This Medina Gounass district is the "dormiroir district" of the dormitory town. Guédiawaye.

Our school's physical and social environment is characterized by the following problems:

• No subdivision, namely floating neighborhoods
• No sanitation, leading to a poor housing
• Unemployment affecting the overwhelming majority of the population

Our students are part of the most disadvantaged layer in the population. They suffer from absolute vulnerability. Indeed, the fact that they live in areas exposed to permanent flooding and because they live day after day by retention basins, they are persistently exposed the dangers inherent to their physical environment. Furthermore, the poor economic environment impacts detrimentally on health (endemic malaria, etc.) and nutritional status (including malnutrition of women and children, etc.) exacerbates the vulnerability of our students.

Consequently, many of our students

• do not have books, a situation which the school is trying to compensate by organizing activities
• do not have suitable school equipment
• spend the day at school without lunch. This led the school to organising a school canteen. But unfortunately, because of the lack of support, it had to shut down. Nevertheless, the school management continues to look out for ways to remedy this situation
• miss several school days per month because of late fees payment even though the school mitigates many difficult social situations as its means allow
• suffer from adverse precarious living conditions which mitigate against schoolwork at home.

... But a clear philosophy underlies the Groupe Scolaire Tierno Sileymaani BAAL's action

The purpose of the GSTS BAAL is rooted in the values that have made the reputation of its godfather, Tierno Sileymaani Baal, and that inform much of his creed.

The mission of the GSTS BAAL is to help transform the children entrusted to its care into men and women, that is citizens aware of their identity and culture, rooted in their heritage, respectful of others and open to the world.

In doing so, the school adopted a vision to implement the right to education by creating a quality institution that offers vulnerable children quality education that will help them to escape the unfavorable environment which is theirs and open for them a window on a horizon of possibilities.

Norms and values to which the educational community must identify are the result of this vison. A number of principles guide the school's actions. They include:

• The human rights approach that puts a special emphasis on gender issues to eradicate factors blocking girls' education

• Promoting the child's total development using the levers of intellectual, physical and artistic activities. Indeed, more than a place of instruction, the school considers itself as a place to educate in the Latin sense of the word (educare). Also, beyond his first mission as an educational institution responsible for providing its students a quality education, it is its duty to be an "educator" in the full sense of the term

• To this end, the school's educational project is based on the settings that are
  (i) the State's guidelines
  (ii) the work intentions (GSTS BAAL)
  (iii) the parents' wishes
  (iv) the children's needs

• Quality for all, even the poorest: this is the reason why, some 40 years ago, when nobody wanted to invest in slums, the school management consciously chose to settle in one of the most disadvantaged neighborhoods of Dakar, with the ambition to facilitate marginalized children's access not only to education, but quality education

• The school motto, "a healthy mind in a healthy body" influences its multi-sectoral approach to education. This approach combines teaching and health, including the provision of nursing care to children and the improvement of the students' nutritional status with the creation of a school canteen that serves meals at low cost to help with dietary balance.