By Crispina Cummings
Education Committee Chairman in parliament, Sulaiman Sesay, MP, has told journalists at his Tower Hill offices in Freetown that he is in support of the minister’s controversial changes in the country’s education system relative to those eligible to write the school-leaving exams.
He said that even students who had reached SSS 2 and 3, but had failed their public exams at the basic education level would have to be made to go back.
The ruling APC party MP said the government was willing and ready to pay their school fees and related charges, adding that that would help bring back the educational system to where it was when Sierra Leone was known as the Athens of West Africa.
As to why the minister of education, Dr Minkailu Bah, chose to implement the new system in retrospect, the MP argued that change was difficult to be accepted but that it was necessary and never too late.
He said many schools were being run to exploit parents and not to give quality education to children. Thus, he assured that the education committee would have to engage local councils, proprietors and heads of schools in an open forum to address issues of school subsides and other challenges in running the schools.
(C) Politico 20/02/14
