By Politico Staff Writer
Sierra Leone and China have forged new closer educational ties in the basic education sector following a virtual meeting between Basic and Senior Secondary Education Minister Dr. David Moinina Sengeh and China’s Vice Minister of Education, Zheng Fuzhi on Friday 15 October this year.
The purpose of the virtual meeting was to share ideas on basic education including integration of technology, distance education techniques, experience sharing and other education related topics.
Dr. Sengeh said that the meeting could be beneficial for Sierra Leone because the country will learn how to manage the basic education sector from China. He said that China has developed programmes for over 200 million students. He said that this number of students in China greatly dwarfs Sierra Leone’s 2.6 million students.
The minister said that he successfully shared the Free Quality Education (FQSE) approach, with developed policies and curriculum work. He said that this is in addendum with the development of the ‘5 Cs’ which he referred to as Critical thinking, Comprehension, Civics, Computational thinking and Creativity. He added that the country has made efforts in providing internet connectivity for schools through Giga.
He promised to develop a joint education cooperation agreement for teachers training and exchange between the two countries. He said that this will be a specific project with bounded timelines. He spoke of how the two countries will continue with their technical engagements that will further deepen ties and cooperation.
Fuzhi introduced his country’s basic education policies and how they have improved the quality of education with the embedding of technology. He said that China has technical framework with compulsory basic education, including the use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in basic education with emphasis on rural areas.
The vice minister said China has a compulsory education system from pre-primary to primary with a total number of nine years to be spent. He said that net enrolment rate in this stage is 100 percent and retention sits at 95.2 percent. He said that they were able to achieve this when they removed miscellaneous fees and further provided textbooks and subsidies, all of which they were able to do in 10 years.
He said that China provides the same and equal education facilities and equipment for basic and secondary in both rural and urban areas, with the schools having national supervision and accreditation. He disclosed their focus now is on developing and promoting quality through curriculum design and training of teachers.
He affirmed that his country was on ICT with 100 percent of all primary schools with internet and 98 percent with multimedia. That is, provision of computers and broadband internet in their classrooms.
He said that all teachers in China must have computer-assisted teaching and that these teachers use technology in classrooms. This, he noted, has enabled the use of television among other things especially during this COVID-19 pandemic.
The meeting was in solidarity with the Sierra Leone-China bilateral cooperation specifically on education. This has continued for decades as the two countries just celebrated their 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations. However, the virtual meeting was the first ever between the two countries’ ministers of basic and senior secondary education.
The two countries share a deep history of collaboration and cooperation during the Ebola epidemic. Sierra Leone also received assistance from China during this COVID-19 pandemic including the donation of vaccine, testing kits among other things. The two countries have also seen teacher exchanges, student scholarships and other developmental engagements.
The virtual meeting aimed to explore how the two countries could sign a joint cooperation agreement and Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in basic education. This is inclusive of sharing of education policy, training of Sierra Leonean teachers, provision of online learning resources and supporting Chinese language teaching in basic and secondary schools across the country.
Copyright © Politico Online 19/10/21
