The individual duties of inspectors, as defined in departmental letter EDN/PS/823/2/2126 of 20/09/1965, were limited for probationary and ranked inspectors to CO level and short vocational cycles. They extended to all levels of secondary education for inspectors holding bachelor’s degrees, engineering degrees and doctorates.
The main activities of the General Inspectorate of Education are structured around the following points:
Circular No. EDN/PS/823/2/2229 of 7 October 1965 sets performance standards of 18 class visits per week and a total of 170 inspection days per year. Sundays and public holidays do not count as working days except away from the place of residence.
From the 1967–1968 school year, the inspection service was attached to the department’s General Secretariat and took the name “GENERAL INSPECTORATE OF EDUCATION (IGE)”.
In April 1968, new instructions on pedagogical inspection were issued.
Inspector workloads regarding the annual number of mission days and the number of pedagogical and administrative inspection reports were set by circulars No. EDN/IGE/03/870/68 of 27 March 1968, which reduced the annual total of inspection days to 160 and stated that a normal inspection week should yield either 2 full administrative inspection reports or the observation of 12 full lessons, with the corresponding reports.
At the start of the 1971 school year, the scale of work required of the General Inspectorate of Education called for reorganising the establishment table, recruiting new inspectors and changing access conditions to the role in accordance with ordinances Nos. 66/299 and 67/230.
Meanwhile, so-called network or association inspections organised and strengthened their structures. However, their services did not promote young people across the sectors they covered alone because they operated outside official channels. The education department quickly recognised the need, given national policy options and the unity of command they imply, to rationalise school inspection and form a homogeneous corps fully integrated within the department and wholly dedicated to its mission and to all the country’s children.
In 1972, the decision was taken: school inspection was unified.
The General Inspectorate became an autonomous directorate under the name “DIRECTORATE OF THE GENERAL INSPECTORATE OF EDUCATION” from the 1972–1973 school year when the department’s establishment was reorganised. That same year, the country signed a cooperation agreement with Belgium known as “SECONDARY EDUCATION INSPECTION PROJECT”, lasting five years, at the end of which Congolese secondary education inspectors would assume all the powers and responsibilities of their role. The special arrangement provided for 25 Belgian inspectors to be made available to the executive council for cooperation, mainly to train counterparts through pairing of pedagogical and administrative inspections.
Administrative and technical staff in the inspection service were also given new impetus, including regular payment of mission allowances and travel warrants, and service vehicles from the Belgian cooperation mission for inspector teams when pairing applied, etc. In the same spirit of efficiency and to reach as many schools as possible nationwide, inspector staffing was raised to 125 posts, of which 104 nationals.
Finally, decentralising inspectors across all DRC provinces and regional processing of reports helped improve the effectiveness of a service whose purpose is the continuing education of educators. Instruction note No. EDN/IGE/01/2556/73 of 25 September 1973 to the offices processing inspection reports set workload standards of 125 to 150 inspection days per school year, at an average of 4 class visits per day.
From 1972, under circular No. EDN/DG/80/3219 of 08/11/1975, the term “facilitator–supervisor” came into force as the equivalent of “Inspector”.
The term “pedagogical facilitation” was introduced as follows: “we must help school heads and insist that they ensure the training and education of their pupils (subjects, curriculum, etc.). At present, the Inspector must above all be an adviser, and only if cooperation is refused should disciplinary measures be proposed to superiors.”
This approach was in fact mistaken in turning the inspector corps into a facilitator–supervisor corps. It would mean giving up the moral authority vested in inspectors by the power they derive from the State itself, which can also support training tasks, and it is essential that oversight precedes training—if only to steer it better.
Thus, on 6 September 1978, Ordinance No. 78-375 on administrative regulations for primary and secondary school inspectors was promulgated.
It profoundly restructured primary and secondary inspection by providing:
Later, these provisions were specified and clarified by Ordinance No. 91-231 of 15 August 1991, which still governs this corps.
The inspector corps is responsible for overseeing and promoting national education in pre-primary, primary, secondary and vocational sectors, as well as school-based education.
Its duties include in particular:
In 2014, the framework law No. 14/004 of 11 February 2014 on national education, in Article 145(2), assigns oversight of pre-primary, primary, secondary and vocational education, continuing teacher training and pedagogical evaluation to the inspector corps.
We are now awaiting the Prime Minister’s decree that will set the organisation and functioning of the General Inspectorate of Education (IGE) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in line with the latest framework law of 11 February 2014.
For any report or information related to national education and new citizenship, call 178
