NEWS > Commentaries APC Governmnt Must Enhance The Standard of Education in Sierra Leone Posted by Aroun Rashid Deen on May 17, 2009, 13:09

The APC-led government in Sierra Leone should hasten to enhance the standard of education in the country. It must do so as a matter of urgency and not view the task at hand as merely performing a governmental responsibility.

Aroun Rashid Deen...Priotize Education Now

The country’s low literacy standard can be attributed to a great degree to the All Peoples Congress.

    Throughout the more than two decades of the one-party rule of the APC under the leadership of its founder, Siaka Stevens, and his handpicked successor, Joseph Saidu Momoh, very little was done to improve the standard of learning in the country. In addition to his refusal to heed numerous calls for desperately needed improvements in the education sector, Siaka Stevens not only resorted to brute force to clamp down on students when they demonstrated against government policies inimical to their interests, he also made a mockery of the learned.

    Reacting to nationwide student demonstrations in 1977, Siaka Stevens retorted publicly that money and not education was what mattered. His exact words were: “We say Bailor Barrie; You say Davidson Nicol.” In other words, while his critics were talking about “Davidson Nicol,” a dysphemism he would use to characterize calls for educational improvements he cared less about, his government believed in the importance of “Bailor Barrie,” signifying the accumulation of wealth only.

    The first African to serve as principal of the then prestigious Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone and, later an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations under Kurt Waldheim, Dr. Davidson Nicol was a respected and acclaimed educator and international diplomat of high repute. Bailor Barrie, on the other hand, was a wealthy businessman of unknown academic attainment who happened to rank among the richest men in the country at the time. What Siaka Stevens was alluding to was that the pursuit of wealth mattered more than enhancing education. Up to this day I wonder what would have led him as head of state to make such a comparison even though he, at some point while in office, surrounded himself with some of the best brains in the country: including Dr. Abdulai Conteh, the current Chief Justice of Belize who served in various ministerial and diplomatic capacities and in an interim committee of the IMF; Dr. Abbas Bundu, who before serving in the APC government was Secretary General of ECOWAS the West African regional organization; and former Governor of the Bank of Sierra Leone, Sam Bangura, whom it was alleged he later had assassinated.

    Education is the single most important development in the life of an individual. It is that which paved the way for man to go into space. It gives us the opportunity to listen and watch live as others speak or play sport thousands of miles away. Education teaches us the usefulness of the different mineral resources in the world. With education, the likes of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Dr. Martin Luther King reshaped the world for the good of man. Lest I forget: It is education that made it possible for Barack Obama, a black man from a broken family and a humble background, to become president of the greatest nation on Earth. Without question, learning has transformed us from the Stone Age to that of the wonders of technology. The list goes on.

    The statement by Siaka Stevens was nothing but reckless. However, it became a popular cliché, particularly among his supporters. Unfortunately, little did he realize that what he had said would negatively impact the education sector and further plunge our literacy ranking. What followed was a rise in the number of school dropouts, with school-age boys and girls streaming into the streets of the capital, Freetown, and other provincial towns as hawkers of all manner of items such as soda-soap, earrings and cola nuts, all in search of the magical wealth Siaka Stevens had touted. Under the stewardship of the APC of the Stevens and Momoh years, the country’s education sector had indeed sunk to an all-time low.

    Pre-independent Sierra Leone had widely been known as the Athens of West Africa and continued achievement in the education sector more than justified that recognition. The country’s first institution of higher learning, Fourah Bay College, was founded in 1876. Fourah Bay College was the first to offer university education in the West African region. It was for many years the citadel of higher learning in West Africa and beyond. Leading scholars from as far away as The Gambia, Nigeria and Cameroon, attended Fourah Bay College. Similarly, the CMS Grammar School of Sierra Leone was West Africa’s first secondary school, accepting students from across the region. However, the decades following the country’s independence, particularly the more than two decades of one-party rule by Siaka Stevens’ All Peoples Congress, saw a gradual decline in every sector of learning in the country.

     Since the days of the APC, beginning in 1968 with Siaka Stevens’ appointment as Prime Minister, a child’s chances of completing primary and secondary schooling depended either on his or her parents’ perception of the value of an education or their ability to meet the costs of sending that child to school.

     Coming from a poor background myself, I had a struggle going to school. My grandmother, who raised me together with four others, could hardly afford to meet the cost of sending us to school. As a result, I had to drop out of school for a whole semester. It was painful seeing other children in my neighborhood attending school while I stayed home on several occasions waiting until my grandmother could raise some money by selling bean akara to pay my school fees or buy my uniforms.

     With the steady rise in unemployment - also synonymous with the Siaka Stevens years - some began to embrace the ridiculed sentiments of the former leader and came to the conclusion that it was, perhaps,  not fruitful to put their children through years of schooling. Their argument was that if Siaka Stevens himself did not need a standard university education to become head of state and a wealthy man, their children may not need one to succeed. However, the latest UN Development Index that saw our country still glued to the bottom of world rankings is a reminder that the government should fully invest in education at all levels and do all it can to encourage access to all strata in society. It was the APC of the past that told us that education is not a right but a privilege. It should be the urgent responsibility of the APC of today to demonstrate that the opposite is true by doing what is right. 

    The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, (UNESCO) has maintained that much has to be done to propel education, particularly in Africa. In a report, Education for All in Africa, UNESCO stated that the majority of African countries are at serious risk of not meeting the millennium development target for providing adequate education for all children by the year 2015. UNESCO says that some 35 million extra teachers are needed throughout the world, with 3 million for sub-Saharan Africa alone. However, countries such as Togo, Liberia, Benin, Kenya and Senegal are making tremendous efforts to advance their education standards. For example, the Togolese government is providing uniforms, books and other essential school materials free of cost for students in primary (middle) schools. With agriculture being the backbone of the country’s economy, the government sees the need to integrate agricultural education into the school curricular. Children between the ages of 5 and nineteen years study programs on agriculture, animal husbandry, carpentry, mechanics and handicrafts. And in the nation of Benin, since 2004, 4600 girls from poor families all across the country have been awarded scholarships as part of that country’s Girls’ Education program. Over six hundred of the neediest boys also received scholarships last year. The scholarships cover uniforms, books and night study lanterns among other things.

    Sierra Leone would do well to implement equally creative initiatives as other countries in the sub-region to address the barriers to improved literacy. The country must also urgently focus on what I believe to be a major factor for our nation’s poor standard of conventional education: a lack of political will to properly address the myriad problems of the education sector. This failure is simply unfathomable. A Sierra Leone with a high percentage of advanced literacy would free itself of every obstacle to development. If that is to happen, improved literacy must be a key political goal for the government.

    Without doubt there is plenty to be done to get us out of our present abysmal state as a nation. The country recently ended a long and bloody war that left the entire nation in tatters. The responsibility to see the country on its right path is, however, not that of the government alone. It is incumbent on us, the citizens of Sierra Leone to do everything in our own power for the good of our country.

    Parents have a particular responsibility to ensure that their children attend school regularly and on time. They also should be more involved in the education of their children. For instance, they should establish parent – teacher bodies that would enable them to regularly monitor school progress and student performance. These bodies should also mobilize to promote increased school enrolments.

    During the months leading to the 2007 elections the APC Party campaigned on a platform of free education for all. It also promised free breakfast programs for children in primary schools. Now that the party is in power it must ensure that it lives up to those promises. This is particularly important in light of the low employment rate in the country and the inability of many parents to afford the costs of basic necessities such as food let alone the costs of education. The provision of a nutritious breakfast is a key element in early education. It has been proven that there is a link between nutritious food and a child’s ability to develop and learn. A healthy breakfast enhances a child’s health and academic performance.

    Government must intervene in the area of facility enhancement. Due to the level of damage done to educational facilities during the war, there is need for proper refurbishing of learning centers. Schools and other institutions should be re-designed to be conducive to learning. They should also include recreational facilities as part of the basic learning environment. The level of training and performance of teachers is also of vital importance. This should be addressed by establishing additional teacher training colleges, including vocational training centers around the country. With the aid of the Sierra Leone Teachers’ Union, programs should be developed for training and re-training of teachers. The advent of technology which has become part and parcel of the classroom calls for the re-training of teachers to be abreast of these new tools of learning. In this regard, the government should endeavor to provide scholarships for teachers on the condition that at the end of their studies they will commit to serve in the educational sector and teach in underserved areas.

    The APC government must also make it a priority to enhance vocational programs, especially those that offer training in skilled trades. Even before the war, the general state of the few vocational training centers in the country, were in very deplorable conditions. The value of vocation education should not be underestimated. There are many youth who would prefer such trade schools where they would be trained in such fields as engineering, masonry and carpentry to name a few. One of the many benefits of vocational training is that it prepares graduates for self employment, while making the design and delivery more demand responsive. Such countries as China, India, Hungary and the Philippines are attracting foreign investments including job outsourcing from the US and Western Europe because of the high rate of their vocational training skills. Vocational education would give our less-privileged youth the opportunity to engage in worthwhile ventures rather than having them trotting behind politicians and engaging in acts of violence and thuggery as the country witnessed couple of weeks ago in Freetown with the brutal raid on the premises of an opposition party.

    As for those of us Sierra Leonens in the diaspora, particularly in the West, while it is politically healthy for us to offer constructive criticisms of the government, it is equally productive to supplement the efforts of those at home, including journalists, proprietors of private institutions, teachers and taxi drivers. The love for one’s country is a show of godliness. But one does not have to be religious or godly to work for the good of one’s country. However, when all is said and done, it is the leadership of the nation that will have the most influence in moving us in the right direction.

    The career-businessman and now President Ernest Koroma is lettered and a former schoolteacher. I have no reason to doubt his deep desire to see our educational standards improve in the country. However, his government must do much more to build a solid foundation for a brighter tomorrow for future generations. That foundation is education. Learning, they say, is better than silver and gold. We better believe it.