School practices and performance in Benin: example of CEG 1 Bantè

The educational system is composed of actors who interact to make it work. The school environment as a sub-system is governed by a mode of operation based mainly on pedagogy and human relations. The objective of this work is to make a diagnostic study in order to analyze the types of relationships that exist between students and teachers, with a view to understanding how they influence the performance of students at CEG1 Bantè. We attempt to examine academic failure and success at CEG1 Bantè by looking at the quality of the relationships between teachers and students in the school. It emerges that Benin's political and educational reforms, combined with the habits of the Bantè population, have been conducive to the emergence of a local professional culture that negatively influences the teacher-student relationship within the school. All of this contributes to producing contrasting results at the end of the year: poor results on national exams reflecting the true level of learners, and better results in class, the result of favoritism and various arrangements.