A/HRC/45/34/Add.1 financial means was the main reason for the interruption of mainstream school attendance. Out of necessity, teachers were often paid through parents’ contributions, which most indigenous families could not afford. Indigenous women asked for support to prevent their children dropping out of school. Bullying and discrimination against indigenous children at school, a curriculum that was not adapted to their culture and the wider endemic discrimination that limited prospects for success later in life all contributed to children leaving school. 50. Culturally appropriate educational programmes are needed to encourage indigenous youth to pursue higher education and become leaders able to represent their own communities and defend the rights of their peoples. The learning curriculum could, for example, feature some indigenous traditional knowledge and practices. The Special Rapporteur did not observe any significant progress in this regard. 51. The Minister for Primary Education confirmed that public schools did not have enough paid teachers for the number of students they were supposed to serve but also said that directives had been issued to school directors to ensure that parental contributions were not requested for indigenous children and to allow indigenous children to attend school even without a uniform. He acknowledged that these guidelines might not be followed by some schools. 52. The internationally funded “observe, reflect and act” school programmes are in practice the only existing form of free education in the country. Certain civil society organizations and several Ministers expressed concern that reserving these programmes exclusively for indigenous children might foster a form of segregation. United Nations agencies have also highlighted rising tensions in Likouala between indigenous and impoverished Bantu communities over access to “observe, reflect and act” school programmes. The Special Rapporteur did indeed notice that, in Kabo, only schools offering “observe, reflect and act” programmes were functioning, because of the lack of paid teachers in the mainstream school system. 53. The “observe, reflect and act” school in Kabo was attended by some 140 indigenous children, under the responsibility of three non-indigenous teachers. The teachers said that they tried to adapt the curriculum to indigenous children but that the educational materials were all in French. They also said that they were paid approximately US$ 100 per month, but that payments were in arrears of over four months; they added that they were not paid during the three months of school holidays. 54. The Government indicated that, in some of their programmes, support to indigenous communities was conditional on indigenous children attending school. While such a conditionality may have been adopted with good intentions, more effort must be made to understand why indigenous children may be reluctant to attend school 20 and to address those reasons by providing positive incentives rather than punitive measures that risk further depriving communities in need. C. Economic opportunities 55. The previous Special Rapporteur recommended that development initiatives to provide redress for the chronic poor living conditions of indigenous peoples and enhance their development opportunities should be designed in a culturally appropriate way with the goal of advancing indigenous peoples’ economic and social rights and of increasing their self-determination. 56. The draft national action plan for 2020–2023 provides that, by 2023, 60 per cent of indigenous communities should have improved living conditions thanks to incomegenerating activities, including through the distribution of welfare or seed funding for income-generating activities, professional training and the recruitment of indigenous people. The plan does not, however, define any concrete indicators or benchmarks for these activities. 20 The draft national action plan for 2020–2023 indeed foresees such a study to identify the obstacles preventing indigenous children from attending school. 11