Monrovia – Since President Ellen Johnson bluntly described Liberia’s education sector as a mess, policymakers of the sector often come under severe criticism.
Despite some level of improvements in the education sector, it continues to suffer from damning criticism from many quarters, including key players in the area.
But according to a 2014 Household Income and Expenditure Survey conducted by the Liberia Institute of Statistics and Geo-Information Services (LISGIS), there have been substantial improvements in recent years.
According to the report, young people are much more likely to have attended school than previous generations and the gender gap has been steadily closing.
The report states that a man born in 1960 had a 67 percent likelihood of attending school at some point in his lifetime, compared to 75 percent for a man born in 1980, and 92% for one born in 1999.
It furthered outlined that the gains for women had been even larger – increasing from 18% for a woman born in 1960 to 39% for a woman born in 1980 and 78 percent for one born in 1999.
LISGIS adds that the literacy levels show similar patterns to schooling, with men’s literacy being approximately 25 percentage points higher than that of women -that is 80.6% for men compared to 54.8 percent for women based on self-reported ability.
Despite these gains, the report noted that the education levels in Liberia are low compared to international standards, with only 62 percent of Liberians having ever attended formal school.
“There were substantial education gaps between urban and rural areas, 72% compared to 47%; men and women, 77% compared to 49%; and consumption quintiles, with 44% of those in the poorest quintile having attended school compared to 81% in the most well-of,” the survey found.
In another development, the survey showed that unemployment rates were low in Liberia, roughly 3 percent nationally.
It added that unemployment was highest in urban area, standing at 4.5% compared to 0.6% in the rural area, and particularly in Montserrado County, with a rate of nearly 6%.
The HIES also pointed out that the lower unemployment rates in rural areas likely reflected the narrow definition of unemployment, which considered a person unemployed only if they have not worked at all in the previous week, but is still actively available for employment, clarifying that the definition ignores the fact that most individuals need to find a way to survive, even if in highly vulnerable and unstable types of employment.
It also maintained that the workforce in Liberia is highly informal, with nearly all agricultural workers and nearly 70 percent of non-agricultural workers employed informal circumstances or employed in the formal sector.
“Nearly three-quarters of the workforce are in jobs defined as vulnerable, referring those either employed on their own account or working as a contributing family worker to either the family farm or the household’s non-agricultural business,” the report maintained.
Report by Gerald C. Koinyeneh – 0880881540/[email protected]