Monrovia – Liberia’s educational system continues to be described as below par with many referring to the system as messy but still there are some students who still perform to expectation in terms of academic performance.
Not all is bad as many may believe, as a few students have shown that there is still hope in the despair in the broken educational sector of the country.
The ongoing High School debate sponsored by Cellcom GSM and being conducted by the Devine’s Event and Consultancy has proven that some Liberian students are brilliant and can give a good image of the country.
The competition has produced some breathtaking moments with young students showing some splendid performances throughout the process.
As it is always the case with every competition, there is always one winner and this year’s edition will see students from the Sammy Dukuly High School located in Paynesville and the Isaac A. David in the same location getting ready to showcase their brilliance at the Monrovia City Hall in the Grand Final this Sunday at 6:00 PM.
The crowd will be chilled with the students debating the topic “Liberia’s underdevelopment is Equally Tied to the Quality of Presidential Leadership”. One of the schools will discuss the affirmative and the other the negative.
Two other schools will battle for the third place trophy. New Destiny will take on Paynesville Seven Days Adventist High School. The topic for the third place will be “Corruption can be minimized in Liberia” –affirmative versus negative.
Some high performing schools left by the way side including the defending Champions, the Salvation Army, Len Millar High School.
This year’s two finalists also indicates that the old system where a few schools were considered that best in terms of academic performance including some of Liberia’s traditional performing High Schools , Cathedral catholic School, Seven Days Adventist on Camp Johnson Road, Tubman High School and others, is no longer the case.
Alex F. Devine, Jr. President/CEO of Devine Event Management and Consultancy International told FrontPageAfrica that being cognizant that Liberia has a good a dominant youthful population which accounts for 65% of its general population as indicated in LISGIS survey report, with majority of population found in the secondary education level his organization deemed it expedient to organize the debate.
“As the conversation of Generational Change remains leading amongst them as 2017 general and presidential election is nearing with the proliferation of constitutional, governance and security reform measures being put into place by this government, it is only fair enough to have these youthful population involved into these ongoing conversation to allow them give their perspectives that could inform decision makers policy making processes. This platform is serving that purpose”, Devine told FPA.
According to him, the 2016 National Inter-High School Debate Tournament Montserrado Edition is also serving as an intervention to buttress efforts by the Ministry of Education and Schools Administration in the promotion of academic excellence, building students fundamental intellectual capacity, and to totally transform the most talked about super Friday ( Students leaving classes for beaches), to an academic Friday.