From daara to a national Islamic-school curriculum

Traditional daara and maglis schools taught the Quran and Islamic practice long before, and largely outside, the colonial and early post-colonial education system, and are described as having played a critical role in basic-education access despite that marginal status. ^{[uil-unesco-islamic-education-gambia]}

In 1996 the government created a General Secretariat for Islamic and Arabic Education inside the Ministry of Education and introduced a unified curriculum across public and Islamic schools, adding Arabic, English, local languages, mathematics, science, history, geography and vocational subjects alongside religious instruction. By the 2003-04 school year, roughly 162 madrassas were enrolling 55,685 learners nationally, 28,234 boys and 21,859 girls, about a fifth of all school-age children, concentrated in low-income rural and urban communities. ^{[uil-unesco-islamic-education-gambia]}