Education

Background

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Although access to education and school enrolment have significantly increased, thanks to the introduction of the Free Quality Education by the government of Sierra Leone in 2018, and the Education Sector Plan (2022-2026) to improve learning outcomes for all children and youths, the quality of education delivered remains low, resulting to poor learning outcomes of students. School completion rate stands at 64% at Primary school, at 44% at Junior Secondary School and at 22% at Senior Secondary School. For many children, especially in rural areas, the issue of low quality and poor learning outcomes, due to lack of trained and qualified teachers and exacerbated by poverty, gender discrimination, long distance to school, perceived low value placed on education, negative social norms and unsafe learning environment, impedes their ability and result in high rates of school drop-outs and extremely low success rate in public examination.

Given recognition to this problem, and our desire to continue to contribute in addressing the root causes, we re-designed the BEFORE project, a two years project, which was implemented in Bo, Bombali, Kenema and Pujehun Districts to increase learning outcomes of students in 16 rural primary and 4 rural junior secondary schools by equipping teachers to address learning deficits of students particularly at the upper primary school classes and JSS classes whilst building the foundation of students at the lower level classes at the primary schools.

Interventions:

We provided training and regular coaching for all the teachers at the targeted schools to improve learning outcomes; strengthened schools governance systems and mobilized community support towards the schools, organised bi-weekly life skills sessions for students; increased number of children with disability benefiting from the project by targeting special needs schools that provide education for children with disabilities and strengthened the relationship between the schools and the government Sierra Leone through the Ministry of Education and the Teaching Service Commission.

Our Achievements:

o In two years – between September 2023 and May April 2024), we trained, supported and repeatedly coached 157 teachers (62% male and 38% female) and 2% are with disability from 20 schools. Data from both DCI’s monitoring and continuing teachers’ assessment reports show that on average over 80% of the teachers at the primary and 83% of teachers at the secondary schools levels are now good at using the DCI’s child centered methodology to teach. At the beginning of the project only 20% of teachers in primary schools and 23% of teachers at the secondary schools had relatively good knowledge and skills in applying child centered teaching methodology.
o About 6115 students - 50.9% girls, 49.1% boys and 3.2%with disability steadily increased their competences and learning outcomes, due to the use of improved child centred methodology. The recent evaluation study of this project reveals that there is a considerable increase in foundational literacy abilities among students of the primary schools from 14% or less to 65% or more, whilst those with foundational numeracy abilities increased from an average of 23% to an average of 64.5%. Similarly, at the junior secondary schools, the percentage of students with basic foundational literacy abilities has increased from 14% (baseline) to 70% whilst those with basic foundational numeracy abilities have increased from 32% to 66%.
o Furthermore, all the 20 schools covered now have functional school governing bodies such as the School Management Committees, Board and Community Teachers Associations (CTAs) meeting regularly and playing their roles despite their own challenges and shortfalls include low commitment of some of the members.

Lessons learnt:

o Transformation of schools in order to achieve sustainable learning outcomes of students requires the use of a multi-stakeholder approach involving the teachers, governing bodies, community leaders, parents and the students themselves focused on building a system that motivates teachers and makes them accountable.
o The right teaching methodology produces tangible results, reviving hope in teachers, parents and students to achieve successes; Conversely, wrong teaching methodologies lead to blame games between teachers and students.
o The school feeding program provides great incentive for the students to attend school regularly and helps in keeping them active in school. However, government must strengthen its monitoring and accountability measures in order to strictly ensure it is completely used for intended purpose
o Socio-economic backgrounds of parents/families influence learning outcomes of students though there are some exceptions.
o Increased application of learners’ centred activities in the classroom keeps children lively and attentive and helps them learn faster.
o When teaching methodologies are child centred, they become inspiring for children and teachers can earn their full cooperation in class, which motivates both teachers and students to work together with great optimism.

Challenges:

o Building the culture of collective responsibility takes time, because some major players including head teachers are quite slow and we do not have the powers to get them out. Some head teachers are not up to the task as others;
o Lack of incentives for the majority of the teachers who are not on pay roll prevent head teachers from subjecting them to accountability when not regularly performing their duties. Majority of teachers at the rural schools in the villages are volunteer teachers and not on pay roll.
o Special needs schools lack adequate specialised teachers and tools that they need to teach and effect learning. There is also lack of provision for higher/tertiary education for students with hearing impairment
o Poor school infrastructures provide poor learning environment that psychologically and physically affect children particularly during the rains
o Lack of commitment on the side of some parents to implement agreements from CTA/SMC meeting such as contributions towards initiatives that can engender improvement of learning among students undermine or restrain implementation of good initiatives
o Difficulty in achieving improvement of learning outcomes of 100% of the children probably because some children are faced with fundamental social and/or psychological difficulties that significantly undermine or block their academic progress
o Some governance and accountability issues are still quite challenging to address- e.g corruption in the school feeding scheme. The government is still weak to effectively play their monitoring and supervisory roles consistently.