{"id":11570,"date":"2022-11-24T17:23:21","date_gmt":"2022-11-24T17:23:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/president-bio-defends-large-education-budget-as-necessary-risk"},"modified":"2022-11-24T17:37:09","modified_gmt":"2022-11-24T17:37:09","slug":"president-bio-defends-large-education-budget-as-necessary-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/president-bio-defends-large-education-budget-as-necessary-risk","title":{"rendered":"President Bio Defends Large Education Budget as \u2018Necessary Risk\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Sierra-Leone. <\/strong><\/span>Sierra Leone\u2019s president has defended his decision to spend almost a quarter of the national budget on education, saying the country cannot develop unless all children go to school.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Speaking to the Guardian, Julius Maada Bio admitted that allocating 1.7tn leones (\u00a380m) this year for its ambitious educational reform programme was a risk, but said: \u201cWe are throwing all our resources, all our energy into education. We cannot develop without improving education. I see it as an existential issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to walk barefoot to school, with not even shoes on my feet. For me to come to this level of leadership, I think education has played a very important role.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bio administration launched its \u201cradical inclusion\u201d programme in 2018, aiming to get millions more children into school by offering free, quality education to all youngsters, particularly those from poor and marginalised groups.<\/p>\n

The government allocated 22% of this year\u2019s budget to education, which represents one of the largest-percentage funding commitments in the world and double the percentage allocation in 2016. Additional money is being sourced from donors.<\/p>\n

Girls\u2019 education is a central component of the programme. More female teachers are to be recruited and trained, while pregnant schoolgirls are being encouraged to stay in class. Until 2020, pregnant schoolgirls were banned from continuing their education.<\/p>\n

The policy has so far seen more than 1 million more children in class and higher completion rates.<\/p>\n

However, the challenges of improving education in Sierra Leone are huge. The country has some of the world\u2019s worst education metrics: fewer than half of the country\u2019s 8 million citizens are literate.<\/p>\n

The country\u2019s 11-year civil war in the 1990s, the Ebola outbreak in 2014 and the Covid pandemic have set back the country\u2019s development by decades.<\/p>\n

The majority of the funding is being used to improve the quality of education by paying and training thousands more teachers. According to Joseph Kamara, from the Sierra Leone Teachers\u2019 Union, approximately 20% of the 37,000 teachers on the government payroll do not turn up for work regularly. In some rural areas, people without qualifications will teach.<\/p>\n

Teacher-training institutions are now required to verify a person\u2019s qualifications before they can be hired. The government has also introduced a \u201cquality benchmark\u201d test to make sure teachers are proficient in maths, English and ICT.<\/p>\n

Five charities are trialling different pedagogies across 325 government schools to research the best teaching methods.<\/p>\n

Alberta Demby, the principal of St Joseph\u2019s secondary school in the capital, Freetown, said the number of pupils at her school doubled in 2018 when free education was introduced. They had to build a new classroom block to accommodate more children, including six girls who are blind.<\/p>\n

No new mothers have been admitted to Denby\u2019s school since the programme started, however. \u201cParents are unhappy\u201d about girls returning, said Demby. Sierra Leone lifted its ban on pregnant schoolgirls and young mothers attending class in March 2020 on the orders of the Economic Community of West African States court.<\/p>\n

Fatima Fullah, 19, who attends Rolal senior secondary school in Port Loko, has stayed in class while pregnant.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany girls, when they know they are pregnant, they will not come to school because they feel ashamed,\u201d said Fullah, who is due to give birth in four months. \u201cBut I decided to come and continue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bio, who hopes to be re-elected next year, admits his radical approach is daring at a time when millions of Sierra Leoneans are feeling the pinch of the cost of living crisis.<\/p>\n

In August, 21 protesters and six police officers were killed in Freetown during riots over the tough economic climate that were the biggest the country has seen since the end of the civil war. Opposition figures argue the government should allocate more resources to help immediate suffering rather than investing in education, which could take years to yield results.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s definitely a risk for a politician. But as much as I am a politician, I\u2019m more of a development person,\u201d said Bio.<\/p>\n

\u201cGirls are beginning to perform [better]. And this is all because of our radical inclusion policy, which makes sure girls are not left behind. Women are part of this; they have been kept at the back for a very long time. I have been vindicated in the past couple of years.\u201d This year, the two top-performing pupils in the country were girls.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were once the Athens of west Africa,\u201d said the president. \u201cThey used to say that, because of the quality of education provided. Sierra Leone is home to one of the first western institutions, Fourah Bay College. It collapsed in the 1990s, but we are trying to rebuild our education facilities to exceed expectations. It is a revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n

For More News And Analysis About Sierra-Leone<\/a> Follow Africa-Press<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Sierra-Leone. Sierra Leone\u2019s president has defended his decision to spend almost a quarter of the national budget on education, saying the country cannot develop unless all children go to school. Speaking to the Guardian, Julius Maada Bio admitted that allocating 1.7tn leones (\u00a380m) this year for its ambitious educational reform programme was a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":11568,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5,7],"tags":[291,293,292],"class_list":["post-11570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-economy","category-head-lines","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-sierra-leone","tag-sierra-leone"],"yoast_head":"\nPresident Bio Defends Large Education Budget as \u2018Necessary Risk\u2019 - Sierra Leone<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sierra Leone\u2019s president has defended his decision to spend almost a quarter of the national budget on education, saying ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/president-bio-defends-large-education-budget-as-necessary-risk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"President Bio Defends Large Education Budget as \u2018Necessary Risk\u2019\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Sierra Leone\u2019s president has defended his decision to spend almost a quarter of the national budget on education, saying ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/president-bio-defends-large-education-budget-as-necessary-risk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Sierra Leone\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AfricaPressTunisiaa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-11-24T17:23:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-11-24T17:37:09+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/sites\/16\/2022\/11\/postQueueImg_1669298227.97.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"628\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/president-bio-defends-large-education-budget-as-necessary-risk#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/president-bio-defends-large-education-budget-as-necessary-risk\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"President Bio Defends Large Education Budget as \u2018Necessary Risk\u2019\",\"datePublished\":\"2022-11-24T17:23:21+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-11-24T17:37:09+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/president-bio-defends-large-education-budget-as-necessary-risk\"},\"wordCount\":803,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/president-bio-defends-large-education-budget-as-necessary-risk#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/sites\/16\/2022\/11\/postQueueImg_1669298227.97.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Africa Press\",\"Africa Press-Sierra-Leone\",\"Sierra-Leone\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"economy\",\"head lines\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/president-bio-defends-large-education-budget-as-necessary-risk#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/president-bio-defends-large-education-budget-as-necessary-risk\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/president-bio-defends-large-education-budget-as-necessary-risk\",\"name\":\"President Bio Defends Large Education Budget as \u2018Necessary Risk\u2019 - 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