Burkina Faso CAP-CEG common mistakes
Burkina Faso CAP-CEG · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Reciting the text of the statut général de la fonction publique and the school legislation from memory in vague terms, without naming the specific obligation or the specific sanction attached to a breach, when asked how a teacher should act in a concrete situation (e.g. absenteeism, corporal punishment, a gift from a parent).
Candidates memorise slogans about 'dignity', 'neutrality' and 'conscience professionnelle' but never anchor them to the actual articles and to the disciplinary scale; under exam pressure they fall back on moralising generalities because they cannot retrieve the precise rule.
What to do instead
Build a one-page table with three columns: professional duty (obligation de réserve, obligation de service, secret professionnel, neutralité, non-violence), the concrete behaviour it forbids or requires, and the sanction or procedure (avertissement, blâme, exclusion temporaire, révocation, saisine du conseil de discipline). Drill it by reacting to ten short scenarios and naming the duty plus the sanction in one sentence each.
When handling a scenario about a pupil's rights or a conflict with parents, the candidate either defends the teacher unconditionally or sides with the family, instead of stating the legal framework, the internal school procedure (dialogue with the director, conseil des professeurs, conseil de discipline), and the teacher's own duty of restraint.
Candidates treat ethics questions as personality tests and answer emotionally; they have not internalised that the expected answer is a procedure, not a verdict.
What to do instead
Adopt a fixed three-step answer structure for every ethics scenario: (1) name the right or duty at stake and its legal source, (2) describe the graduated procedure and who is competent at each stage, (3) state the teacher's personal posture (reserve, confidentiality, non-violence). Practise it aloud until it becomes automatic.
Describing adolescent development as a list of labels ('crise d'adolescence', 'égocentrisme', 'pensée formelle') with no link to what the teacher should actually do differently in class the following week.
The psychology course is revised as vocabulary to be recited; candidates never convert theory into pedagogical decisions, so they cannot answer the 'what would you do' part of the question.
What to do instead
For each concept, prepare a paired statement: concept in one clause, classroom implication in the next (e.g. imaginary audience → avoid humiliating a pupil publicly; need for peer belonging → use structured group work with assigned roles; developing formal reasoning → move from concrete examples to the rule, not the reverse). Answer every psychology question with at least one such pair.
Confusing the stages and authors of developmental theory, attributing a concept to the wrong theorist, or presenting Piaget's stages as rigid ages that all pupils must reach on schedule.
Revision notes copied from summaries blur the attribution, and candidates never test their recall under time pressure, so they mix names and invent stage boundaries.
What to do instead
Make a single attribution grid (theorist, key concept, stage names, approximate ages, one classroom application) and self-test by covering columns. Add one sentence on the limits of stage theory: stages are approximate, development varies, and the teacher must diagnose the actual level of the class rather than assume it.
Writing a lesson plan that states aims but no measurable operational objectives, no prerequisite check, no timing, and no planned formative check, so the plan reads as a table of contents rather than a teaching sequence.
Candidates reproduce the headings of a plan they once saw without understanding that each heading must contain a decision; they also underestimate how long each phase takes in a real class of sixty pupils.
What to do instead
Use a fixed template with explicit minutes: prerequisites (5 min), situation d'apprentissage, operational objectives phrased with an observable verb, teacher and pupil activity in two parallel columns, planned formative check before the summary, and a differentiated follow-up. Time three of your own plans on paper and cut anything that cannot fit.
Presenting a lesson as pure teacher exposition, or at the opposite extreme as an activity with no institutionalisation, so the knowledge never gets stated, structured and written down for the pupils.
Candidates imitate either the lecture they received at university or the discovery-method rhetoric of training college, without learning that a Burkinabè lesson sequence normally runs from concrete situation to structured rule and back to application.
What to do instead
Rehearse the standard sequence explicitly: situation d'apprentissage, manipulation or observation by pupils, formulation of the rule by the class with teacher correction, institutionalisation written on the board and in the cahier, then graded application exercises. In the oral, name each phase as you move through it so the jury hears the structure.
In subject-specific didactics, giving correct disciplinary content but no didactic transposition: no analysis of the likely pupil error, no choice of representation or material, no justification of why this example rather than another.
Candidates prepare the subject matter (the mathematics, the grammar, the history) and assume that knowing the content is enough to teach it; they have not practised the 'how would you make this learnable' question.
What to do instead
For each major topic in your specialty, prepare three items: the two or three classic pupil errors and their cause, the material or representation you would use (number line, substitution table, timeline, map, experiment), and the trap you would set to expose the error. Answer didactics questions by moving systematically from content to error to device.
Treating assessment as marking: producing a grade and a comment but no diagnostic information, no criterion-referenced judgement against the objective, and no described remediation for pupils who failed.
Candidates equate evaluation with the average they must record, because that is what their own schooling modelled; they have not practised building a marking grid or planning what happens after the test.
What to do instead
For any evaluation question, always deliver four elements: the objective being checked, the criteria and indicators with a points allocation, the interpretation (who failed on which specific skill, not just who scored low), and the remediation plan (grouping, re-teaching of the identified sub-skill, differentiated exercises, re-check). Prepare one worked example of a remediation sequence for your specialty.
Answering curriculum and policy questions with opinions about the Burkinabè system instead of citing the official framework: the current programme, the competency-based approach, the official language policy and the role of the national languages, and the structure of the education cycle concerned.
Candidates rely on hearsay and on their own school memories, and they have not read the official texts closely enough to distinguish what the programme requires from what their former teachers happened to do.
What to do instead
Keep a summary sheet per level you are applying for: official programme objectives, the competency-based structure (compétences, situations d'évaluation), the language of instruction rule, and the assessment regime. Verify each line against the official document and mark anything you cannot verify as uncertain rather than improvising it in the oral.
In the oral interview and demonstration lesson, delivering content with no board plan, no time markers and no awareness of the jury's criteria, or answering the interview with long unstructured monologues about personal history.
Candidates prepare content only and never rehearse aloud in real time in front of listeners, so they discover the timing, the board and the stress for the first time on the day.
What to do instead
Rehearse the demonstration at least three times with a timer and a peer who scores you on a written grid: announced objective, relevance of the situation, clarity of instructions, board organisation, pupil activity, formative check, timing, and closing summary. For the interview, prepare a ninety-second structured presentation (motivation, training, professional project) and answer questions in three sentences: position, justification, link to the classroom.