Monrovia – In their hundreds, students of various high schools in Montserrado County have been trooping to the headquarters of the Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC) having had the assurance that its political leader, Senator George Weah, would settle their WASSCE registration fees.
Report by Lennart Dodoo, [email protected]
Students of various high schools, both private and public, can be seen in their schools’ uniforms from morning till very late in the evening on the grounds of the CDC headquarters.
The Liberian government over the weekend announced that it would no longer be able to subsidize WASSCE registration fees and called on parents to shoulder the responsibility.
“The GoL is obviously no longer in a financial position to shoulder the responsibility of paying examination fees for any group of candidates at WASSCE level in view of the various commitments currently competing for the very lean resources available to her.”
“We therefore appeal to parents, corporate organizations, international donor agencies and philanthropic private individuals to brace up towards the payment of WASSCE fees for their children and wards or the provision of scholarships for the indigent (poor) students,” said Deputy Education Minister for Instruction, Dr. Romelle A. Horton, who is the government’s chief nominee to the West African Examination Council (WAEC).
This pronouncement came as a shock to thousands of students, some of whom are self-supported. But at the headquarters of the CDC, many of these students believe their plights would be addressed.
“We came here because we were told by our teachers that Senator George Weah was the one going to pay our WASSCE fees,” a student of the G.W. Gibson High School told FrontPageAfrica.
According to student Mulbah Paye, raising the US$60 for the registration might appear very small an amount for some, but for him, it’s going to be a tough task for his parents to raise US$120 for him and his sister.
“We have come this far (12th grade) and now it is possible that we may not complete high school only because we cannot afford WASSCE fee and the government, too, is saying it can’t afford. This is the situation we have in this country,” he lamented.
He said he was encouraged by his classmate to go the headquarters of the CDC where names of students were being taken to for settlement of the fees.
Parents, who spoke with FrontPageAfrica expressed frustration over the inability of the Government to subsidize the fees.
“Why then do we have a government?” an older woman, who only identified herself as Ma Marie, rhetorically asked.
“If this government said education is a mess, what are they doing to help us make it better?
We are sending our children to school but the government is not doing anything to change it from mess.
But I don’t blame them, their children are in the expensive schools and some of them don’t even have their children in this country that’s why they are treating us like that,” she added.
Michael Johnson, a parent of a 17-year-old boy in the 12th grade blasted the government for placing the responsibility on the shoulders of parents.
He said – “How much is the government paying civil servants? When you buy a bag of rice from the salary, you have nothing left.”
“If this government wants us to be fully responsible for our children, they must pay us in order for us to be able to take care of our families, too.”
Mr. Johnson questioned why government is investing so much money in the partnership school system when it could not afford subsidies for her high school students.
Speaking to students at the CDC headquarters, the party’s youth wing chairman, Jefferson Koijee, said students have been flooding the premises of the party over the past three weeks.
According to him, CDC does not see education as a privilege as being made to appear by the current government; rather it must be the right of every Liberian child.
“Students should only have the responsibility to go to school and the rest should be solved by the state,” Koijee insisted.
According to him, Senator Weah had often helped students with payments of their WASSCE over the past three weeks, but has now decided to write President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to consider finding a solution to the plight of the students.
Ministry of Education Budget
In the 2017/18 National Budget, US$45,083,772 is allotted to the Ministry of Education.
Of this amount, US$35,749,344 is for compensation of employees; US$6,767,217 for use of goods and services; US$582,624 from grants; US$250,000 for non-financial assets and US$1,734,587 for subsidies.
Is Liberia Prepared?
Education facilities around the country do not meet minimum standards.
For this reason, some students have expressed fear that there will be a mass flunk with the introduction of the WASSCE in Liberia.
Though this new standardized regional examination was introduced to the region in 2006, this year would be Liberia’s first time writing it nationwide.
Some students who spoke with this paper lamented that their schools do not have equipped laboratory for practical as they wondered how they would be able to pass the practical aspects of the subjects like Chemistry and Physics in the WASSCE.
Liberia has often been rated amongst the least performing countries in regional exams in the sub-region. The country’s poor performance has often been blamed on the effect of the war and lack of instructional staffs and materials.
It can be recalled in 2013, all 25,000 students, majority of whom had just completed high school failed the entrance exams of the state-run University of Liberia.
The “epic fail” of every single candidate in the admission exam provoked bafflement, consternation and heated debate across the country, with some convinced that flaws in Liberia’s education system had been brutally exposed.
Moving Forward
However, speaking to the FrontPageAfrica, Dr. Evelyn Kandakai, Chairman of the West African Examination Council (WAEC), said Liberia has to brace herself for the WASSCE examination.
According to her, the WASSCE was introduced to the region over a decade ago and Liberia cannot continue to blame the war for its inability to participate in the examination.
Dr. Kandakai: “What Liberia has been doing is only national exams; so all the other countries took this West African Senior Secondary School Exams which is like a common exam for the region. I think it is about time that Liberia turns her courage to fully get on board when it comes to the WASSCE,” she said.
She added, “It’s true that we’ve had difficulties, but lot of countries in the region also have the same difficulties, for example Sierra Leone also been through a lot and Sierra Leone is going to WASSCE.”
