Poor baccalaureate results a blow to enrolment rate

A mere 8% or 3,742 of the 46,587 school-leavers who completed the 2021 baccalaureate in Mauritania were successful – a result that is expected to have a knock-on effect on the West African country’s struggling higher education system that has an enrolment rate of only 5.76%.

The results of the baccalaureate, which is the secondary school exit examination with five divisions, traditional arts, modern arts, mathematics, natural sciences and technical education, was announced on 20 August by the Mauritanian Ministry of National Education.

Sheikh Ibrahim Ould Al-Din, the secretary general of the General Union of Mauritanian Students, told University World News via WhatsApp that the domino effect of the low pass rate on higher education enrolment will be immense.

“While the 8% success rate of the 2021 baccalaureate results will lead to 3,742 eligible [students] to enrol into higher education institutions, last year 7,200 students entered the sector after a 16% success rate in 2020,” Ould Al-Din added.

“Subsequently, the number of students to be enrolled in higher education institutions this year will decline by nearly 50% compared to last year,” he pointed out.

Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Amar Alnajim, a former secretary general of the Al-Wava Student Union told University World News via Facebook messenger that there appears to be a governmental policy that relies on increasing the difficulty of baccalaureate exams in order to reduce the number of successful students to match the scarcity of available seats in higher education institutions as well as reducing the number of unemployed certificate holders due to the acute shortage of job creation opportunities.

Mauritania’s public higher education system consists of one public university – the University of Nouakchott, which absorbs about 70% of the student population – two higher education schools and several higher learning institutes.

While the enrolment rate in higher education in Mauritania is 5.76%, it is 38.55% in Morocco, 51.37% in Algeria and 31.85% in Tunisia.

Pre-university education reform

The political party Sawab (which means ‘right path’ in Arabic) issued a statement about the results on 22 August and called it a “catastrophe”.

“Over the course of a decade, the success rate did not exceed 8%, while in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, it reached 68% ... and success rates in other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa did not fall below 30%,” according to Sawab.

It pointed out that “92% of our children who failed in obtaining the baccalaureate left [the schooling system] in frustration, despair and face unemployment – a horizon that includes nothing but the risk of getting involved in crime as part of local or international gangs.”

“From 1999, all educational plans failed to save public schools,” the political party said.

The President of Mauritania, Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, acknowledged on Twitter that the educational process in Mauritania still needs “a lot of work”.

Similarly, Mohamed Melainine Ould Eyih, Mauritania’s Minister of National Education, said on Twitter: “Weak baccalaureate results were expected due to the structural imbalances in the educational system, the impact of two years of the pandemic, and new procedures for regulating exams.”

He added: “These baccalaureate results will be subject to careful analysis in order to re-structure the secondary education divisions.”

Ould Al-Din of the General Union of Mauritanian Students, said: “The low success rate of the baccalaureate can be attributed to several reasons, including a weak pre-university education system, especially [in] public schools, and poor students’ and teachers’ levels.”

“Thus, the pre-university education system must be improved and new higher education institutions must be established to enhance the enrolment rate and produce the skilled scientific workforce needed for the national development of a sustainable, knowledge-based economy,” Ould Al-Din concluded.

Elizabeth Buckner, an expert on higher education in North Africa and an assistant professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto in Canada, told University World News: “Mauritania’s low success rate in the baccalaureate must be viewed as an explicit strategy – one that we have seen before in many countries – by creating an artificially low success rate, the exam keeps many deserving young people out of higher education, most likely due to capacity constraints in the existing university system.”

Buckner is the author of the forthcoming book titled Degrees of Dignity: Arab higher education in the global era in which she wrote about this phenomenon in North African and Middle Eastern countries.

A former Fulbright scholar to Morocco, Buckner said: “Countries around the world, including Mauritania, have committed to meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – and the educational goal for the SDGs includes expanding access to higher education.

“In order to meet this goal, Mauritania is going to have to find ways to expand access to higher education, which will include both building more universities and supporting secondary schools students to be prepared for university-level education,” she said.