By Tanu Jalloh
At age 16 Lamin Fofanah is now in Junior Secondary School, JSSIII at the SM Broderick Secondary School on Fergusson Street in Freetown. It is a municipal school and therefore run by the Freetown City Council. In JSSI he came second in a class of 44 and in JSSII he took fifth position in a class of 32.
Despite the slight drop in positions from second to fifth, he has never failed in all his primary and secondary school years. However, that trajectory is not all smooth and easy.
His family was, and still is poor and lives in a farm settlement called Madina village, near Fadugu in the northern Koinadugu district of the country. He tells me of his father, his ‘mentor’, Usif Fofanah. He says although the old man had a small family of five - his wife and three children- he could barely feed, let alone send them to school. He died on 13 April, 2011. Lamin says it was God’s will. And he smiles about it. But his genial face soon elapses, as he explains, and the beam gives way to his real face of sadness and longing.
Lamin is the last of three children, all boys. Unlike his brothers, he was lucky to have been educated so far. “By chance, I started school at the District Educational Council, DEC primary. Things were difficult so my aunty came and took me to the city,” he tells me in relatively good English, while his face lightens with smile again. He seems happy. He looks hopeful too. When he was 11 and in primary four his maternal aunty, Kaday Mansaray, a primary school teacher, was in the village as part of her frequent visits. She is a family woman and seems to care too much about those back in the village. On one of those occasions, she suggested that Lamin comes with her to Freetown.
In 2007 the eleven-year-old boy started schooling at the SM Broderick where his aunty taught, until December 2010 when she and three of her children won a Diversity Lottery and travelled to the United States. He says it has not been easy since she left. “But she calls every now and then and they send for me,” he says.
I have called at Lamin’s place, on top of the hills overlooking New England Ville and across the Jomo Kenyatta Road flank, west of Freetown. At about 10:47pm he was still not less busy with domestic chores. I was there to discuss his career after high school but also to get to know how comes he does well in school in spite of the late night he keeps, working. He says he likes it and enjoys it. He has less time to read but studies hard.
For the likes of Lamin what is basic might not be as basic as you would imagine in the basic education school system in Sierra Leone. He tells me of how family members raise his L25,000 per term, the official fees for junior secondary school like the one he goes to.
In 2012 the Global Partnership for Education, GPE talks of its US$13.9 million grant signed in 2008 to expand access to education and improve the quality of basic education in the country, improve the standard of teaching and increase access to learning materials.
After the decade long civil war, between 1992 and 2002, most of the infrastructure in Sierra Leone was ruined, schools were worst hit. By 2002 the country was understandably on the bottom rung of the United Nations Human Development Index report in the world.
Almost a decade after the war was declared over, progress is still slow. According to GPE findings released in June of this year, some 82 per cent of the country’s people live below the poverty line. So like Lamin’s, many families still struggle today to educate their kids. Besides, “Sierra Leone still suffers from insufficient food, poor shelter, high levels of illiteracy, and limited access to clean water…achieving universal quality basic education by 2015 is a top priority.”
However, the organisation says this country faces many challenges: 25-30% of children are not in school and most children face poor classroom conditions and lack sufficient textbooks and other learning materials. In addition, 40% of teachers are not qualified or adequately trained.
When it becomes law following the 2004 Education Act basic education becomes a right. “Basic education shall be, to the extent specified by the Minister by statutory instrument, free in government assisted primary and junior secondary schools and private schools shall not frustrate the right to basic education …by charging fees that are, in the opinion of the Minister, unreasonable.”
Ironically, in a country with a minimum wage between Le21,000 and Le25,000 a parent, including a guardian, who neglects to send his child to school for basic education commits an offence and shall be liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding Le500,000.00 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year or to both such fine and imprisonment. That reality does not seem to be playing well for parents who struggle with feeding and the ever nauseating transportation problem.
According to a ‘Cost of Living Comparison Calculator by City’ for 2012, the cost of living in Freetown in Sierra Leone is high compared to other places. “The overall cost of living is determined using the prices for defined quantities of the same goods and services across 13 Basket Groups. Freetown in Sierra Leone is currently ranked 195 overall out of 780 places (rank 1 is most expensive: rank 780 is least expensive).”
The online portal also states that: “Education costs are very high compared to other places for items such as pre-school fees, primary school fees, high school fees and tertiary study fees.” Those fees, referred to in the Education Act of 2004 as “prescribed fees” must be paid by parents whose minimum wage is still Le25,000. While it criminalises none payment of fees by parents, without recourse to the current realities, pupils could be denied access to basic education if those parents are unable to meet the cost.
“A pupil in respect of whom any of the prescribed fees are due or are owing may be refused admission or re-admission, as the case may be, to any school, or if he has been readmitted, may be excluded from school until all the prescribed fees due up to the date of such exclusion have been paid.”
In 2010, a right based group called Education For All – Sierra Leone Coalition (EFA-SL), raised serious concerns about “the reduced budgetary allocation from 11.3% in 2009 to 10.8 percent. This allocation falls far below the 20% margin earlier agreed by Governments all over the world including Sierra Leone.”
It argues that national education budgetary allocations in Sierra Leone over the years have been very limited and rarely reflect the needs of the expanding and challenging educational system for the achievement of the EFA and Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
However, for Lamin Fofanah and thousands of his likes hope of light seems to be at the end of the tunnel when in 2012, the education sector budget rose from Le 112.1 billion in 2011 to Le 138.9 billion, indicating some 23.9 per cent increment. The challenge will be, affordability.
