By: Christiana Mabande
Despite modest progress compared to many sub-Saharan nations, access to education remains a significant barrier in Liberia.
The sector has many difficulties including low learning outcomes, overage enrolment, inadequate infrastructure, bad learning environments, and unskilled and unprepared teachers.
The situation is more severe in rural areas, where only 59% of children finish primary school. This underscores the urgent need for prompt actions to improve educational opportunities and outcomes in these places.
“The children are not learning as they should. Philips said, “That is discouraging especially the environment, you cannot have a child coming and sitting on the floor two to three times they wouldn’t want to come again,” Bah Philips.
Philips oversees Buyowoh Public School in Todee District lower Montserrado County as its principal. In the school, more than 300 pupils attend the ABC–6th-grade primary school, which was constructed in 2014 during the administration of former president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (EJS). However, the current enrollment has decreased to 60 compared to the previous school years.
Liberia has the highest percentage out-of-school children in the world, with 56% of primary school-age children not receiving an education, according to UNICEF. 15–25% of children aged 6–14 who are not in class, and 54% of kids who finish primary school.
Many students choose not to attend the school because of its terrible status. Children are made to take their chairs from home to keep them from sitting on the unpaid floor.
“I haven’t gotten instructional material from the government or MOE since the EJS regime. Weah six years we didn’t receive supplies till now,” Bah Philips.”
It’s not just Boyouwoh Public School that has this problem. Another Margibi County elementary school with such restrictions is Lloydsville Public School. The school is the only educational facility in the township. It provides services to more than 3,00 kids. The mat structure is an elementary school with two teachers. Students are said to be learning less than half of the curriculum each semester as a result of these different underlying issues.
The school is the only educational facility in the Lloydsville township and provides services to more than 3,000 kids.
As a result, students are only learning less than half of the curriculum each semester while some are no longer finding the school attractive thereby engaging in farming activities.
Children are made to take their chairs from home to keep them from sitting on the unpaid floor.
Jebbeh Smith attends Lloydvill’s Public School. She explains the unfavourable atmosphere in which they are immersed. In addition to mentioning the paucity of furniture, she added that during classes, when the few chairs they have are occupied, they sit on bricks.
She went on to say that they all are placed in the one classroom that was unaffected by the strong windstorm that destroyed the roof of the school building last year.
“We have Nursery to third grade on one side while grades 4-6 on the other side which are divided by the chalkboard,” Jebbeh narrates.
A parent named Dorothy Sukpah is pleading with Margibi, the county’s leadership, to renovate the public school in Lloydvillie.
She said the condition of the school is frightening away the children as many of them have opted for farming activities than going to school.
“As I speak, we are cutting sticks to be used for the roofing of the building but no zinc, and we don’t have money to buy zinc,” Sukpah.
The people of Lloydsville Township are pleading with the county’s Legislative Caucus and other pertinent individuals to act quickly to save their children’s future.
