1. Introduction

American author Alvin Toffler 1928–2016, once said: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.” The school is the educational institution entrusted by society to achieve its educational goals and is considered the basic unit that organizes the movement of education. It leads the process of building future generations to take responsibility for the progress of the community. The school is no longer regarded as an educational institution for teaching and learning only, but also has a social function of serving the community and participating in the development of sustainable and comprehensive institutions.

In Mauritania, the education system has been facing poor outputs for decades, which is mainly due to lack of promotion of education, poor infrastructure and low levels of educational attainment in public education institutions. These problems are the result of several factors, including the preoccupation of successive regimes on the country for decades. This concern is reflected in the absence of follow-up; the lack of a study of cost-effective activities in this sector; some decisions that are issued but not implemented; the projects that were born dead, and also some political issues, such as nepotism and many other political problems. All these factors made citizens lose confidence in public education and resort to private education, which led to the spread of private education in the country.

2. A Background of Private Education in Mauritania

The Mauritanian state was forced to open the door to private investment in the education sector in 1981 due to the inability of public indexes to meet the needs of students. Private schools have become widespread and have become a strong competitor to public education. Special education institutions have achieved the highest success rates and their pupils have ranked first in most official competitions. These factors have made the citizen have more confident in private education.

Although private education was almost exclusively for the rich class at the beginning, recently there has been a great turnout from the middle and poor classes as well, each within their means. One can find a poor family living in a High density suburb that uses their income for their children to study in private schools it is now common to find a low income family sending their children to study in private schools The cost for this family may be about $100 per month as tuition fees for children at the Secondary School. As for the rich, they spend about 1,000 dollars a month, equivalent to the salaries of three teachers or as fees for four children to study in a private school.

Based on this, we can say that the quality of education is the first concern among the daily priorities of the Mauritanian family, which has allocated a monthly amount of their monthly budget in order to help their children and push them towards achieving an education. When the problems of Public education is taken private education has become the only refuge for students to receive their right of education In the public school, which was neglected due to the lack of reformist policies in this sector, but this escape to private tutoring as a “safe haven” hides the suffering of the Mauritanian family.

3. The Problems Faced by Private Education in Mauritania

The reality of private education shows that it still suffers from many imbalances that hinder its development and what contributes high performance, due to several factors, the most important of which includes:

3.1. Dispelling Teachers' Efforts

Because of the service of the teacher in both sectors (private sector and public sector) makes the student a victim of lack of time to teach him. They have been pushed into undeclared contracts. This is why the student is the victim, whether it is In public schools or private schools.

In public schools, students do not have sufficient hour with the teachers, and no follow-up to achieve qualitative learning, because time and effort are shared between or among schools.

3.2. The Chaos of Educational Curricula (Why is Important)

The educational system in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania is based on a special methodology that defines the mechanism of work and the distribution of programs, which prohibits the teaching of the French language in the First year primary school and teaching only six hours in the Second Year for a number of reasons. At the same time, many private schools teach fourteen hours of French for the first year of primary school, without being restricted by the curricula approved by the Ministry through the National Institute of Education. The curriculum is more diverse, and far from our culture and religious tendencies. (far from culture and religious tendencies of the local people).

3.3. Relying on Layman’s Ideas

Some private schools are owned by people with good capital base but who lack the actual expertise to run academic institutions and may also rely on ideas of people who are not experts in education. “Many sponsors of private schools have ignored all intellectual abilities and material and moral efforts in the preparation, printing and supply in a symbolic way to serve the educational process¹” Study Review lack comprehensiveness and precision in briefing and treatment, and of course they force their students to photograph them in their schools.

3.4. Forging Student Results

The danger of falsifying students' results is not less than what is mentioned above. Of course, people always think that the children of the private schools are more successful and exemplary, but they are often unaware of the level of educational attainment of their children. It is when the children participate in competitions or exams as the High school seal certification exam that their parents realize that their children have low competence. The private school fabricate results in order to market themselves to parents. Parent will be unlikely to transfer their children to other school, rather attract more external children In addition to all these obstacles, there are other problems, the most important of which are is the lack of infrastructure and random expansion, and the high dropout rates, which obstruct the development of these institutions and the overall functioning of the educational system in the country.

3.5. What are the Key Gaps in the Evidence?

The extent to which this review can address its guiding question: can private schools improve Mauritania student education?– is limited by critical gaps in the evidence base. First, and most it is widely known that there is lack of data, there is a lack of data on the true extent and diverse nature of the private education sector operating in Mauritania. What we know about private schools often stems from limited knowledge of registered private schools; less-well documented is the scale and coverage of unregistered private schools which undoubtedly constitute a large proportion of providers. Published papers do not always make the status of schools clear, but more often covers recognized schools whose operations are more overt, government-registered, regulated (in principle), and sometimes government-aided, than unrecognized schools. Second, the literature is geographically heavily weighted to North Africa (particularly In Algeria, Tunisia and Morroco). No material was found on conflict-affected or fragile states, in spite of the policy emphasis on these countries.

Third, the vast majority of the literature deals with primary schools exclusively or primary and secondary (and sometimes middle schools) combined. There is very little literature that focuses exclusively on middle and secondary schools. The degree to which private primary school pupils are able to transition into secondary schools is a related but largely under explored question. The vast majority of studies focused exclusively on rural areas or rural and urban areas combined. There was little reference to peri-urban areas.

Likewise, studies of the effects of private schooling on equity are currently limited to snapshot or cross-sectional designs. This leaves unanswered questions about the long-term impact of private schooling on employment, social mobility or, given the gender differential (gender inequality), women’s economic participation (women’s participation in the economy). Likewise, few in-depth analyses or ethnographic studies have looked at the effects of private schooling on household poverty over time. In addition, comparative work is thin, leaving little room for meaningful comparison across and within contexts.

Further, although it is widely acknowledged that the performance of education systems has to be understood in the particular socio-economic and political environment in which they operate, there are few political analyses of private schooling in Mauritania. This is limiting our understanding, in particular, of how incentives enable or constrain public-private collaboration directed towards quality improvement and the small-scale politics of negotiated ‘choice’ at the community level. Further unraveling the relationships of accountability and control between parents, users, policy-makers, and politicians is necessary to understand how the market for private schooling works for and against poor people and the potential effects of external interventions on this market.

4. Private Schools in Mauritania: Who Benefits?

Ÿ Students in public schools in a similar socio-economic context as private schools tend to do equally well.

Ÿ Parents seeking the best educational opportunities for their children are willing to pay more to secure the better resources offered by private schools – even though similar resources may be available in public schools that serve advantaged student populations.

At some point, many parents have considered whether it would be worth the expense to enrol their child in a private school. For parents, private schools may offer a particular kind of instruction that is not available in public schools. If private schools also attract higher-performing students and better teachers than public schools, parents will also feel that they are securing the best possible education for their child.

Some school systems also promote private schools under the assumption that, with the flexibility that accompanies autonomy in designing curricula and allocating resources, private schools may be seen as stimulating innovation in the school system. And since that innovation helps private schools to compete for students, public schools may then have to re-think their own approaches to education to remain competitive.

Detractors of private schooling argue that private schools segregate students and reinforce inequities in educational opportunities, particularly when those schools charge parents a fee. With greater financial resources, detractors argue, these schools can afford to attract and recruit the best students and teachers.

5. Conclusions

This review set out to rigorously and objectively interrogate a number of hypotheses and assumptions that underpin the polarized debate about the potential and real contribution of private schools to improving Students education in mauritania. Arriving at general conclusions is difficult because of the diversity of the private school sector, the significant gaps in the evidence, and the fact that available research is rarely generalizable in itself. However, of the assumptions tested in this review, one was rated ‘strong’ and seven were rated ‘moderate’. While these findings cannot be universally translated into policy regardless of context, they do merit policy-makers’ attention. What is clear, moreover, is that the majority of assumptions at the heart of this debate are in fact weakly evidenced. There is more contestation than there is consensus in the literature, with many findings inconsistent and some being outright contradictory. Further research in targeted areas, such as those suggested above, could lead to a strengthening of this emerging evidence base.

What do these limitations and contradictions mean for the theory of change linking private schooling to improved learning outcomes, quality, efficiency, access and equity of education in mauritania? The evidence is more indicative than it is conclusive.

We conclude from the information we have talked about (discussed) that private schools plays an important role in mauritanian education system, the Private education since its establishment by private individuals has been a unique tool to contribute to the development of education and thus contribute to the social and economic development in Mauritania. In addition to the educational service it provides, it also has a large socio-economic role by providing jobs. It is an important partner in addition to the State in promoting the system of education and training, expanding its spread and improving its quality and this helps ease the burden on the state. However. Although it suffers from many problems and has not yet reached the required results, it is an auxiliary factor and an integral component of public education because of its creation of Positive Competitiveness and motivation for high quality.

Note

1. http/mauritanian .info/ar/articlees