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Liberia: Why Spelling Matters

Ora Garway

31 August 2010

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Mango Town — Golden and draped in red, white and blue ribbons, the spelling trophy won by Mango Town School has become more than a source of orthographic achievement for the students and their teachers. It has brought a wealth of attention to a school that was largely forgotten.

Before clinching the spelling contest sponsored by the Liberian government, the primary school was deemed "not conducive" to learning, according to Principal Joseph Dweh, and had too few textbooks, desks and classrooms for its 307 children.

"I mean, we were completely neglected by the government," Dweh said from his small office in the mud-walled school. "The children's right to education was infringed upon until we won the spelling bee."

Mango Town School has existed since the 1950s but was abandoned through much of Liberia's 14-year civil war. The school reopened in 2005 and has had little attention since.

The Ministry of Education has now vowed to build a new school this year and give more attention to Mango Town's needs, Dweh said. The nine teachers, who had not received their pay for months, also received promises that their salaries would be paid more regularly.

"Had it not been for the spelling bee that we won, then we would not have had any attention here," said Varfley Kenneh, a teacher.

Fatu Kamara, 13, a third-grader who participated in last September's spelling contest, also said the trophy has brought changes. "I feel happy that we were able to win the spelling bee competition because it made us start getting textbooks, copybooks and other things that our friends can receive at their schools."

Daunting Challenges

The trophy notwithstanding, Mango Town is a microcosm of a national education system facing daunting challenges. Liberia has Africa's lowest primary school enrolment rate – 30 percent – despite primary school attendance being compulsory since 2006. The net school enrolment rate is five percent, according to the government's 2010 Education Sector Plan, and 36 of the nation's 92 districts have no high schools. Net enrolment is based on the number pupils attending classes appropriate to their age.

Girls are more likely than boys to repeat a class, to drop out of school and to be illiterate, despite concerted efforts to help them and keep them in the classroom. According to recent government health and population surveys, 56 percent of Liberian women never attended school and it is not unusual for high school classes to be overwhelmingly male.

The male-female disparity extends to teaching staffs. Only three percent of the nation's high school teachers are women, according to the Education Ministry. Public schools, especially those outside the capital, Monrovia, face a dire shortage of qualified teachers. Most rural schools depend on "volunteers" or "recruits" who have little formal education themselves. Although these teachers are entitled to pay, they are not certified and do not get full civil-service benefits. That means salaries are erratic.

School administrators complain that there is often a disconnect between what the government and international aid groups do, and what schools really need. Teachers and administrators say the national education hierarchy ignores local input when it comes to planning and building facilities.

"Schools are being dedicated in remote areas where there are no students, and there are too many overcrowded schools that have to go begging," said one international aid worker involved in education training and planning. "You can't blame the government entirely because they are trying, but there is just too much of one hand not knowing what the other is doing."

Liberia has faced a monumental task since the civil war ended in 2003, and not just in rebuilding its educational system. During the fighting that began in 1990, infrastructure was ransacked, state services were disrupted, and rival warlords looted or destroyed public property. More than half the public schools were ruined, according to the Education Ministry.

The fighting left some 200,000 people dead, while an estimated 750,000 Liberians, of a population of 3.5 million, fled to other West African nations. Many have returned, overwhelming a nation that is trying to rebuild schools, infrastructure and other state institutions.

Backed by generous international support, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has made education a priority since taking office in 2006. The Ministry of Education gets the largest allocation from the country's budget – U.S.$43 million this year, or 12.4 percent of public spending. International donors and aid agencies also provide substantial assistance and contributions through school construction and training.

The European Union plans to spend 125 million euros (U.S.$165 million) on Liberian education and health through 2013, while the U.S. Agency for International Development alone provided U.S.$33.5 million for educational programming in 2010. Plus, 14 American Peace Corps volunteers will take up teaching posts this year, returning to the country for the first time since 1990.

When Payday Doesn't Come

Still, school administrators complain of not receiving promised operating funds and non-civil service teachers often say they are not paid for months at a time. Mango Town's Dweh believes that free and compulsory primary education can be realised only if students are encouraged with textbooks, book bags, uniforms, notebooks and other supplies.

He also said teachers without certificates, currently the backbone of the nation's teacher corps, deserve regular pay. Teachers earn a minimum of U.S.$80 monthly.

At Bopolu Central High School in Gbarpolu County in northwestern Liberia, 18 of the 34 staff members are not certified teachers. "Most of the recruited teachers are in the senior high school, so when the teachers are not paid it affects [the seniors] the most," said John V. Lombeh, the vice principal for instruction.

Teachers are getting frustrated, he said, and looking for other work, even in a country where eight in 10 people have little or no work. Bopolu's only high school chemistry teacher left to work for a mining company after going for months without pay. Some teachers fight back – they have launched peaceful demonstrations in Monrovia, and administrators at Bopolu say the instructors sometimes hold back grades or refuse to go to class to draw attention to their plight. As salaries were being handed out three days before Liberian Independence Day on 26 July, some of the non-civil-service teachers said they had not been paid in five months.

Bopolu, located in a lush countryside of rolling hills four hours' drive north of Monrovia, is accessible only by roads that become rivers of mud during the rainy season. A new classroom block was built this summer so that primary school students could attend class separate from the senior high school located up the hill. But Lombeh worries about having enough teachers as the new academic year starts and says it is nearly impossible to recruit teachers from Monrovia, home of the state university, due to insufficient housing and other inducements.

He also worries about poor sanitary conditions and no water. "It's our biggest challenge," Lombeh said outside his office as sun broke through the dense clouds after a downpour. "There is no water for sanitation … and the cooks have to walk into the village to get water for cooking. We have a water tank but it has a crack and doesn't hold water. We have asked for help, but we still have no water."

Mohammed Kamara, a Bopolu teacher whose children attend the local public school, also worries about how schools are run.

"As a parent you want the children to have quality education," Kamara said. "We don't have that here."

In Mango Town, just off a paved road that leads to Monrovia, school conditions overshadow other problems. There are no toilets, not enough desks, no electricity and only enough books for every fourth child. "The class is not spacious enough to move around in, the children get dirty fast because of the dirt floor, and the condition of a school also has an effect [on learning]," kindergarten teacher Esther Gweamee said.

Gweamee said she finds it difficult to prepare her lessons in the absence of a curriculum or teaching materials, an acute problem in a country that until last year had only one textbook for every 27 students. "We strain ourselves to find topics to reach to the level of these kids," she said.

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