Assane Ndiaye

Assane has been a teacher for 28 years. His career has made him a byword throughout the country for perseverance, dedication, ambition, and commitment to ensuring good education for children despite limited resources. Assane considers this of supreme importance because Senegal urgently needs development; moreover, only education can solve problems such as terrorism, intertribal wars, political dictatorships, poverty, and illiteracy.

Beginning in 1990 as an assistant primary teacher, Assane succeeded in a competition of the Normaliens-Instituteurs in 2010, which opened the door to university for him. He then obtained a Master's degree in literary studies before joining the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Dakar, where he qualified in Secondary Education in 2015. He is currently a secondary school teacher at Mbacké 2 High School. In this part of Senegal, students travel great distances to schools that often lack toilets and functional water points. Assane’s school does not have an infirmary for the medical care of the students, and the malaria epidemics that come between October and December cause massive dropouts that negatively impact the completion rate. In terms of quality, the lack of infrastructure and teaching aids make it very difficult to achieve all the objectives set.

Throughout his career, Assane has retained students and improved the educational offering by combining academic and extracurricular activities. In the classroom he mixes theory and practice by always highlighting how Knowledge and life skills interact. This empowers the learner by placing them at the heart of their own education. The experience Assane has gained has also allowed him to build the capacity of colleagues to obtain their professional degrees and improve their classroom practice in order to provide their students with a quality education. The average completion rate for his students for the Certificate of Elementary Education is high: around 70% between 1994 and 2009 with a record of 100% in 2000. Since 2008, he has also hosted a radio program on the Sud FM Mbacké station to encourage students and sensitise the community to the importance of education.

In 2005, Assane received a distinction for service to the Senegalese education system from the Minister of Education. And in 2017, the State of Senegal honored him with the title of Best Teacher in Senegal, accompanied by a diploma of honour signed by the President of the Republic himself. If Assane wins the Global Teacher Prize he intends to focus funds on three major areas: access to school, quality of teaching, and the mobilisation of the community to meet the challenges facing the school. Assane intends to transform the school association into a foundation to be able, with the help of partners, to extend its actions on a continental and global scale.