By Chernor Alimamy Kamara
President Julius Maada Bio has made a commitment to address learning loss and learning poverty at the foundational levels of education.
He made the commitment at the inaugural launch of the Foundational Learning Exchange (FLEX) 2023 at the Bintumani Conference Center in Freetown on the 6th February, 2023.
He told the conference that had he not learned how to read, write, and with a basic arithmetic knowledge at age 10, he wouldn’t have been President of Sierra Leone today. He said foundational learning gives every child a fighting chance to contribute to their fair share of the nation-building process.
“If we fail to get this right, we will be depriving our countries and our continent of a whole generation of nation-builders,” he said.
He pointed out that the government wants to start a tradition of learning from one another’s experience in improving foundational learning in order to accelerate that progress toward the SDG-4, which is quality education. He frowned at the situation of children growing up in the 21st century deprived of the tools of literacy and numeracy.
The President referenced Sub-saharan Africa where he said it is estimated that the majority of 10- year-olds are not fundamentally numerate, and cannot read, comprehend, and correctly answer questions about what they read. He reiterated that the persistent learning poverty in Sub-saharan Africa in particular predates the global disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“For years, learning losses have been caused by years of chronic political and social instability, underinvestment in education planning and financing, and the lingering but ever-pronounced impact of climate change on societies and economies,” said President Bio.
He recalled the vision statement from the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Gutierrez on transforming education, in which he called for students to be able to learn. He stated that, through the Freetown Manifesto, the country is building regional support to transform education.
He boasted that Sierra Leone is one of the first signatories of the commitment to action created by the World Bank and UNICEF and launched at the Transforming Education Summit. He asserted that education is a fundamental right and not a privilege which he said is reflected in the country’s policies, practices, and what proportion of the national budget the government allocates to financing education.
He went on to say that, education must be universal, equal, comprehensively safe, and radically inclusive of all irrespective of gender, ability, age or socio-economic backgrounds. He emphasized that the government has added one million more learners, especially girls, achieved gender parity in basic education, and registered higher achievement outcomes for girls.
He also spoke of the government having also catered for specialized learning and teaching materials and hot school meals in poor and deprived areas.
According to the Minister of Basic and Senior Secondary Education, Dr. David Moinina Sengeh, the government’s inspiration for transforming Sierra Leone’s education stems from political leadership. He said it is going to be difficult for any government to transform education without the willingness of the leadership of the country.
“In Sierra Leone our biggest asset is that President Bio is the Champion for education,” he said.
He stated that in collaboration with the educational transform programme, the country now has electricity programmes to light up schools for learning. He urged donors for more funds so that the programme could materialize and more schools could benefit.
Gambia’s Minister of Education, Claudiana Ayo Cole in her presentation noted that nothing can be more important than the foundation of a country which is its educational system. She said an educational system that does not have strong foundational learning will definitely lack quality.
She thanked President Bio for taking the bold step of initiating foundational learning. She said this is not the first meeting she has been attending with programmes in transforming education agenda with the President, and mentioned the U.S Education Summit as another.
She affirmed that more attention is needed on foundational learning which she said is the bedrock for quality education, and referenced the Gambia’s education which the minister said gives full attention to early childhood development.
Copyright © 2023 Politico Online (08/02/23)
