By Isaac Massaquoi
About seven years ago now I was doing some research on the human development sector in Sierra Leone. Along with a colleague journalist, and as part of his work schedule, we had cause to interview a Sierra Leonean lady who worked on education matters for the World Bank in Sierra Leone at that time.
My colleague Francis Sowa raised wide ranging issues with her, covering the education sector. We found her ideas to be very insightful but not all of those ideas are required for this article. So, I want to focus on her response to questions on the issue of the government grant-in-aid scheme for students in some tertiary institutions.
She was clearly not impressed with the way those grants had been awarded down the years and suggested, not in as many words, that all governments had tried to do was to milk political gains from such awards instead of focusing on the development aspirations of the country.
The World Bank expert said former President Ernest Bai Koroma, who was preparing to face the electorate for his second term, must make absolutely clear his government’s development priorities by the courses they award grants for. She did not see it as an attempt to marginalize other courses but a very bold move to plan for the country’s development. So, if the government was planning to offer, say one hundred grants in total, the nation’s development needs rather than political point-scoring would dictate whether students studying Law, Social Work, Agriculture, Engineering, the sciences or Communications got the proverbial Lion’s share.
The second point she made was that the government must take very practical steps to increase the morale of Technical and Vocational Education Training or TVET. She said apart from increasing budgetary allocations to the sector efforts must be made to demonstrate that middle level manpower skills acquired from vocational institutions are crucial to driving the economy more so than certain courses at the University that people do to satisfy some childhood dream. And there is nothing wrong with fulfilling childhood dreams by the way.
The education expert said for a start the president could make symbolic appearances at graduation ceremonies for some of the main TVET institutions across the country in the same way he does for University graduations.
Clearly now, her first point appears to have been addressed by this government and like for everything else, we can argue about the priorities of the New Direction in selecting Agriculture, Sciences and Engineering as principal beneficiary course of the grant-in-aid scheme.
Invariably, the nation now knows that a good portion of the tax money put in education goes into training the next generation of Agriculturists, Engineers and Scientists. By the end of the first term of the New Direction we should have started feeling some tremors in these sectors on the development infrastructure for us to applaud that decision or ask them to change focus.
The second issue has not been addressed decisively and in an equally powerful way as the first. There is a clear image problem around TVET in Sierra Leone going back years. Many Sierra Leoneans think that every child that puts on a school uniform in class one should end up with a degree from Fourah Bay College. They also think those who end up in TVET doing Plumbing, Electrical Installations, Motor Vehicle Mechanics, Tailoring, Catering and such other programs are dropouts and social misfits looking for something to do just to feed themselves. They only realize how much we need such skills when on a deserted highway their car’s fan belt goes down and they can’t figure out what to do or their cesspit is blocked leaving their whole compound covered with the smell of raw sewerage.
For many years the middle level manpower skills sector in Sierra Leone was dominated by the huge migrant community from neighboring Guinea. Sierra Leoneans have entered the ground but just check your vulcanizer down the road, your baker next door, your shoemaker across the street and the tailor who does those beautiful African designs that our big men like so much and you will realize how much ground we still have to cover in technical and vocational education training. I believe money should be diverted from other areas in the education sector to boost TVET and I can specifically point to one area I have closely observed for about two years now.
SCHOOL BROADCASTING UNIT
Towards the end of Minkailu Bah’s tenure as Minister of Education under the All Peoples Congress government he embarked on an unnecessarily ambitious school broadcasting project that I believe was very poorly thought through in the context of present day realities in the information and communication sector. I am not aware of any actions taken by the new minister to demonstrate his intention to do something fresh and innovative with the whole school broadcasting project.
Independent Media Commission records show that in 2017 Minkailu Bah acquired ten FM broadcast licenses to start radio stations across the country for school broadcasting in Bo, Makeni, Kenema, Pujehun, Magburaka, Kailahun, Kabala, Kono and Freetown – obviously certain parts of the country are left out and I don’t know why but that’s not the line I am pushing today.
My point is that the very idea of the ministry owning and operating radio stations for teaching purposes when they can do so in a much more cost-effective way and achieve even greater results is what I expected the new minister to have taken a good look at one year since taking up office. With respect to our professional colleagues in the Freetown version of Education Radio, their share of the radio audience is absolutely negligible.
These ten new radio stations, minus the one in Freetown which is up and running now should be scrapped immediately. It might lead to potential loss of jobs for some colleagues but in the wider national interest and considering the enormous cost involved in running one radio station – staff salaries, fuel for generators in rural communities, equipment and other consumables it makes very little sense to push this program through when existing radio stations that performed so well during the Ebola outbreak could easily carry these programs for far less? How in this world would any Education Radio in Kabala for example, beat Radio Bintumani in terms of audience share considering how much the station is part of that community?
What the ministry needs are regional Production Houses in the regional headquarters where content is developed and distributed across the different regions of the country. A handful of producers would also monitor broadcast schedules to make sure the stations deliver on their commitments.
I have gone to this length on this matter simply to demonstrate how we can save money to put into TVET. There may be other areas. Part of the package for this new focus on TVET must include well equipped workshops, strategic cooperation agreements with established institutions doing TVET across the country.
It must also include access to loans and training in how to run small businesses for the young people when they graduate.
In this twenty-first century Information Society, the ministry of education has to make sure they use the full range of possibilities offered by ICTs and not assume that pupils will run home to listen to some English Literature class on radio when, with their smart phones that can download the podcast and listen to it several times long after the first broadcast and even ask for clarifications online instantly.
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