By Hajaratu Kalokoh
A headcount exercise conducted by the government of Sierra Leone revealed that 37% of schools reported higher number of pupils in the Annual School Census (ASC), confirming a long held view that rogue school authorities give out bloated data to attract larger funding.
The headcount which was conducted between January and February 2020, was meant to validate the data from the school census conducted in 2019.
The anomaly was revealed in a press statement confirming payment of tuition fees for pupils in government and government assisted schools in the country for part of the 2018-2019 academic year and for the first term of the current [2019-2020] academic year.
The revelation raised fresh concerns over the practice of school authorities swelling their school roll to attract larger funding in the form of government subsidy.
“The head count conducted to validate the actual enrollment figures in schools shows anomalies in enrolment data summited by some schools in the 2019 Annual School Census (ASC),”the notice released by the Ministry of Finance reads in part.
It adds: “In 29% of schools, the enrolment numbers are consistent between the two data sources, while 37% of schools reported much higher numbers in the ASC that was recently counted.”
According to the notice, there was only 1% overall difference in enrollment numbers between the ASC and the completed headcount.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Finance, Ahmed Sesay, explained to Politico that the number of pupils keeps increasing every year as a result of this practice by school authorities. And this, he added, has increased the need for more funding.
“If you look at the total amount of money disbursed to schools across the country for first, second and third term of 2018/2019 and first term 2019/ 2020, it summed up to about Le146 billion. But if you look at the trend of payment for the first term of 2018, the amount of school fees that was paid was around Le 30.4 billion. And in the second term it increased to Le 35.8 billion. By the time we went to third term of 2018/2019, the amount that was paid was Le 37.3 billion and by the first term of 2019/2020 the amount also increased to Le 42.3 billion,” Sesay, who is Public Relation Officer at the ministry, said.
Officials have said that the inconsistencies are putting a strain on the meagre resources that should be allocated to all schools.
The ministry said census figures were used to not only pay fees but to arrange for necessary supplies of education materials like textbooks and registers.
The Education Ministry has not released the names of schools who were suspected to have bloated their enrollment figures.
Politico contacted the ministry for comments on what would be the possible action, but the coordinator of the Free Quality Education programme, Amara Sowa, failed to get back to us as promised.
In their press release announcing the payment of tuition fees, the ministry warned school authorities to “desist from cheating the system.’’
“I don’t think the ministry, or the stakeholders have reached any conclusion on what the next line of action will be (with regards to schools who reported higher number of pupils),” said Sesay.
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