Only 30% of Francophone Africa's Kids Read by End of Primary

Only 30% of students in Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa reach sufficient reading proficiency by the end of primary school, and only 20% reach sufficient math proficiency. That is the headline finding from PASEC2019, the regional learning assessment run by CONFEMEN — the Conference of Ministers of Education of French-speaking countries — across the 14 countries tested in that cycle. It’s also the number CONFEMEN’s own sitting president cited publicly when she called on member states to make better use of these results.

What matters for a school administrator is not just the 30%. It’s what CONFEMEN itself says is standing in the way of using that number: what the organization describes as “poorly exploited” evaluation results, tied to a limited evaluation culture, and a missing “dynamic communication system” for turning assessment data into action. That diagnosis — from CONFEMEN, about its own program — is the part school-level administrators can actually do something about.

What PASEC’s reading-proficiency numbers show, and why CONFEMEN keeps repeating them

PASEC has grown from 10 countries in 2014, to 14 in 2019, to at least 21 in the 2024/2025 cycle — making it the largest regional learning assessment in Africa, according to a 2025 briefing note from the UK’s National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER). It tests reading and math at the start and end of primary school, and — new as of the 2025 cycle — at the end of lower secondary too.

But growth in coverage hasn’t solved the deeper problem CONFEMEN has flagged about itself. In a 2025 post co-authored by CONFEMEN staff for the Global Partnership for Education, the organization states plainly that its own 2019 study “revealed that the results of evaluations are poorly exploited, due to a limited evaluation culture.” That finding is why CONFEMEN launched PACTE, a follow-on program built specifically to help member countries translate assessment data into policy and practice — and why one of its explicit recommendations is that countries “set up a dynamic communication system” to improve how results are disseminated to, and used by, field-level players and partners at the national level.

The NFER briefing echoes the same gap from a different angle: among the unresolved challenges to PASEC’s own consolidation, its stakeholders named “a systematic communication approach” that can hold together operations and collaboration across the many working languages involved in the program.

Progress within the PASEC2019 cohort wasn’t uniform, either. Comparing the 2014 and 2019 testing cycles, Niger, Benin, Senegal, and the Republic of Congo posted gains; Cameroon’s scores held flat; and Togo’s math results declined. Private-school students outperformed public-school peers by 22 points overall — even after accounting for location — according to the Center for Global Development’s analysis of PASEC2019 microdata. That same analysis estimated that, at the pace measured across those two cycles, PASEC countries would need another 45 years to close the gap with current European performance levels — a scale of catch-up that makes the speed of turning any single cycle’s results into action matter as much as the accuracy of the results themselves. It’s also a reminder that what happens inside a school is not the only thing shaping these numbers.

Côte d’Ivoire already turned the number into a reform

CONFEMEN’s diagnosis isn’t purely theoretical — one country has already acted on it at the national level. According to the same report on CONFEMEN president Prof. Mariatou Koné’s January 2025 remarks in Dakar, the PASEC2019 findings directly prompted Côte d’Ivoire to launch a deep reform of its education system — the États Généraux de l’Éducation Nationale et de l’Alphabétisation — which produced structural changes aimed at improving sector performance. It’s the pattern a “dynamic communication system” recommendation implies: a national assessment result, translated into a concrete institutional response, rather than a report that circulates among ministries and stops there.

The open question is what happens between a national reform announcement and an individual classroom. A ministry-level roadmap doesn’t reach a parent unless something at the school level carries it there — and that’s precisely the layer CONFEMEN says is underdeveloped.

PASEC’s 30%/20% figures are specific to Francophone Africa, and differ from continent-wide numbers built on other methodologies. A 2025 UNESCO Global Education Monitoring “Spotlight” report (not limited to Francophone countries, and using a different combined indicator) found that only 10.8% of children achieve the minimum proficiency level in both reading and mathematics by the end of primary school. That figure isn’t directly comparable to PASEC’s split — different countries, different measurement — but it underscores that the learning crisis extends well past the 14 to 21 countries PASEC tracks. PASEC’s early-grade reading data also keeps rare company: a March 2024 analysis from UNESCO’s IICBA institute notes that early-grade (grade 2) reading and math data worldwide predominantly comes from just two sources — PASEC and Latin America’s LLECE program.

Communication is not the only factor behind the gap

None of this means a better communication system would, on its own, close the proficiency gap. The same PASEC2019 microdata, analyzed by the Center for Global Development in 2021 (PASEC2024 results were still pending as of August 2026), show between-school inequality widening from 2014 to 2019, only half of teachers reaching the highest reading-proficiency band, 40% of children reporting frequent hunger at school, and 54% having repeated a grade — none of which a messaging platform fixes. These factors correlate with outcomes in ways communication cannot touch. What a communication layer can do is make sure whatever a school already knows about a child reaches the household reliably.

What “better use of results” looks like in a real school

CONFEMEN’s recommendation — a “dynamic communication system” — is easy to state and hard to picture. In practice, it breaks down into a few recurring, concrete patterns:

A note at the end of every term. A short, plain-language message sent to every household through whichever channel that household actually uses — SMS for families without a smartphone, an app notification for those with one — triggered automatically when report cards are finalized. Two or three sentences: where the class stands against the term’s reading or math benchmark, and one specific thing the family can do that week — “10 minutes of read-aloud, four evenings this week,” for example, rather than a generic exhortation to “support learning at home.”
A plain-language explainer when a report lands. When a national or regional assessment report is published — a PASEC country report, or a ministry roadmap like Côte d’Ivoire’s — the school circulates a single-page explainer within a week: what the data shows, and the two or three concrete actions the school is taking in response. Not the full report. Not a press release. A translation, aimed at parents rather than policymakers.
An automatic flag when a child falls behind. Given that 54% of PASEC-tested students have repeated at least one grade, a school that already tracks at-risk students triggers an automatic message the moment a child is flagged for possible repetition — requesting a short conversation with the family within the coming week, rather than waiting for the next scheduled parent-teacher meeting months away.

None of these require new data. They require a system that turns data schools already hold into a message that reaches a household on schedule, every time, without a staff member manually remembering to send it.

Building the school communication layer PASEC says is missing

That’s the operational requirement underneath CONFEMEN’s recommendation: a way to reach every family, on the channel that household actually uses, triggered automatically by the events that already happen inside a school — a term ending, a report landing, a child falling behind — rather than depending on someone remembering to write and send it by hand.

Purpose-built platforms exist for exactly this workflow. BeeNet’s messaging and daily-recap tools are one implementation of it — automated progress updates tied to grading events, a daily recap parents actually open, and channel routing that doesn’t assume every household owns a smartphone. It’s one option among several — not a substitute for the teacher-supply and equity issues the same PASEC data points to. If it’s relevant to your school’s situation, the schools use case walks through how it fits, and a short demo is the fastest way to see whether it’s a fit.

CONFEMEN identified this gap from its own 2019 data. Côte d’Ivoire turned a version of it into national reform. A newer PASEC cycle, now covering 21 countries, is already in the pipeline with results still pending. The diagnosis has been public for a while — the question left for any individual school is not whether a communication system would help, but how much longer it waits before building one.

References

Lopes, G. H., & Hsieh, P.-T. J. (2025, March). Broadening the regional learning assessment landscape: Insights from PASEC’s trajectory in Africa. National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER). https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED676265.pdf
Hounkpodoté, H., & Bologo, A. (2025, January 23). How the CONFEMEN education systems analysis program (PASEC) impacts education policies. Global Partnership for Education. https://www.globalpartnership.org/blog/how-confemen-education-systems-analysis-program-pasec-impacts-education-policies
Cheickna, S. D. (2025, January 23). CONFEMEN : Mariatou Koné appelle à une meilleure utilisation des résultats du PASEC pour réformer l’éducation. Fraternité Matin. https://www.fratmat.info/article/2631157/societe/confemen-mariatou-kone-appelle-a-une-meilleure-utilisation-des-resultats-du-pasec-pour-reformer-leducation
Wodon, Q. (2024, March 27). Proficiency in Reading and Mathematics: Where Do We Stand in Africa? UNESCO International Institute for Capacity Building in Africa (IICBA). https://www.iicba.unesco.org/en/node/135
UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report, with African Union, African Centre for School Leadership, VVOB, ADEA, Education Sub-Saharan Africa, and Forum for African Women Educationalists. (2025). 2025 Spotlight on Basic Education Completion and Foundational Learning in Africa. https://www.unesco.org/gem-report/en/publication/2025spotlight
Le Nestour, A. (2021, January 19). New PASEC Results Show Modest Improvements in Student Learning in Francophone Africa, but Inequalities Are Widening. Center for Global Development. https://www.cgdev.org/blog/new-pasec-results-show-modest-improvements-student-learning-francophone-africa