The overall objective of this Learning and Innovation Credit (2000-2003: US.8 million) was to further develop and assess the merits of bilingual education in Mali, in terms of financial and educational sustainability. The project was designed at a time when the education system was facing the following problems: (i) low enrollments, including gender and regional imbalances
(ii) poor learning results in primary schools
(iii) low efficiency in public education
(iv) poor accessibility to education for all children
(vi) proliferation of models for community involvement in schooling
and (vii) central management. To achieve its objective, the approach taken was to introduce a bilingual education model - pedagogie convergente - in six languages as the basis for introducing curricular revisions, producing textbooks based on the changed curricula, testing teaching and learning materials, testing student achievement at the end-of-project to determine the model's efficacy, and building community partnerships to elicit local support for introducing the model at the primary education level.