Togo - Summary

The challenges that educational policy planners in Togo face are not simply financial. Informal education at the very age levels when children would attend primary schools progresses as it has from time immemorial. Cultural information and language fluency is passed down from generation to generation quite effectively. However, the trouble with this mode of education is that it is naturally and inevitably splintered across ethnic lines. In real terms this kind of education is divisive. The numbers of those who attend school long enough to learn French and as a result acquire a common denominator across ethnic lines are very small. The small number educated in French and the French system provides further problems by introducing an elite group that is by definition estranged from the rest of Togolese society. This further complicates the development of a rational educational system.