Post-Earthquake Technical Note on School Reconstruction (Serge Theunynck)
- Sets the damage in sequence rather than as one event: fewer than 500 schools affected earlier, nearly 1,000 damaged and more than 120 destroyed by the 2008 hurricanes, and 6,000 damaged and 2,000 destroyed by the 12 January earthquake.
- Distinguishes two meanings of the word norm, the average of what exists and a prescribed threshold, and warns against sliding between them in planning discussions, which is a precondition for standards that can be enforced.
- States quantified norms such as a minimum plot area of 2,500 square meters.
- Records about 400,000 children aged 6 to 11 out of school in 2003, 19 percent of the age group, against a system holding 2.10 million pupils.
- Separates the causes of over-age enrolment: about 89 percent of pupils were over-age in 2003 while repetition explains only 13 percent, so late entry rather than repetition is the driver, with a net enrolment rate of 24 percent against a much higher gross rate.
- Records the private sector's structural weight through FONHEP, which represents two thirds of non-public schools that are themselves 90 percent of all schools, and whose members signalled that some schools would not reopen for the school year.
- Notes urban density as a planning constraint, with Port-au-Prince reaching 25,000 inhabitants per square kilometer, denser than Paris intra-muros at 20,000, while rural settlement dispersion within a single commune is itself a challenge.
The longer of the two July 2010 technical notes on Haitian school building, concerned with how reconstruction should be organized and procured rather than only with how a building should stand up. Read with the Paultre note it forms the technical basis of the school building strategy the ministry set out to write after the earthquake.
Its starting point is the damage sequence rather than a single event: the 2008 hurricanes damaged nearly 1,000 schools and destroyed more than 120, having followed an earlier event affecting fewer than 500, and the 12 January earthquake damaged 6,000 schools and destroyed 2,000. That is the scale against which any norm has to be affordable.
The note is unusually careful about the word norm itself, distinguishing a norm as the average of what exists from a norm as a prescribed threshold, and warning against the slippage between them in planning discussions. It then sets out quantified norms such as a minimum plot area of 2,500 square meters. On the demand side it records access figures that explain why: about 400,000 children aged 6 to 11 were out of school in 2003, 19 percent of the age group, with the school system holding 2.10 million pupils; the share of over-age pupils was about 89 percent in 2003 while repetition accounted for only 13 percent, so over-age enrolment is mostly late entry rather than repetition; and the net enrolment rate was dramatically low at 24 percent against a much higher gross rate. It also records the private sector's weight, with FONHEP representing two thirds of non-public schools which are themselves 90 percent of all schools, and its members signalling that some schools would not reopen.
How to cite
Ministry of National Education and Vocational Training (MENFP), 2010, Post-Earthquake Technical Note on School Reconstruction (Serge Theunynck), https://menfp.gouv.ht/#/documents/official