The NPSE result is out and I am impressed. Really though we have to give it to the current minister and his team for the speed with which everything was done. It’s the first time in the history of this country. Keep it up! Also, the scores significantly improved compared to last year. Another good thing about this year’s result is that it shows that girls are ready to take over, we are proving our point that the future is indeed female. I am so proud. Finally I find it quite refreshing that pupils from schools in the provinces had such high scores, that will go a long way in the decentralisation process as parents in the provinces will be at ease sending their children to school knowing that they will be receiving the same quality education children in Freetown are getting. Good Job! I know for a fact that a good result is the collective effort of government policies, teachers, parents and pupils. Therefore praises cannot just be given to a single unit. You have all done well, especially the parents who have to work double during this pandemic you deserve a pat on the back for all your hard work.
While I understand that this year’s result is a pretty good one considering the fact that we are in a global pandemic and these children had to stay at home for a long time and take virtual classes, or mostly depended on their parents to tutor them, one thing that has been bothering me though for quite a long time is this, the highest scores. What has been happening to the scores? why is it that for the last 5 or so years we have seen a decline in the overall highest score now that the children are arguably smarter. Something is fundamentally wrong and I trust that the current minister and his team are also thinking about it and finding a solution to this decline.
For instance I sat to the NPSE in 2001 and in that year the overall highest grade score was 420, there were twenty pupils with scores of 400 and above, and I wasn’t even among the first fifty pupil with a score of 371 although I was first in my school, The cathedral girls primary school. To top it all when I went to the prestigious Annie Walsh memorial school we were forty seven in class and the last person in our class had a score of 356. Considering that most of the pupils with very high scores went to private secondary school. Yep it was that good. By the way before anybody starts blaming the war, the war was officially declared over in 2002 and this was 2001.
Where did we go wrong as a nation? As a parent, I naturally want my child to do better than I have done in everything and this is my concern. What can we do to make it better? I think there needs to be an overall upgrade on teachers, by overall I mean not just an increase in teacher’s salary, not just a promise to give scholarship to children of teachers. I mean equipping and empowering our teachers with not only a teaching certificate, but also training. Teaching is an art, it is not Just passing on Knowledge to others. Otherwise there are very smart teachers out here who would have made fabulous teachers but are not.
My best teacher in primary school was my class six Teacher Mrs levi-John, and I am sure it has nothing to do with how smart she was as a teacher. Mrs Antoinette Robert of The Annie Walsh memorial school and Mr A.J Lasite of The Sierra Leone Grammar school didn’t become such great teachers by being smart. Everything in the world is evolving and teaching must evolve too. I think that there are few people in the teaching field who truly love teaching, most of the teachers in Sierra Leone are in there because they couldn’t find the kind of job they want. Can we make this field attractive? Can we improve on the teachers overall morale? Yes we can and if we can achieve that we will see a turnaround in the education sector.
Can we make Education More attractive for our children? yes we can. I tell people all the time that Education is hard therefore it must pay. People should be rewarded handsomely for all the hard work they put into learning anything, Salary scale in Sierra Leone is so low, even graduates with some so called “good jobs” are still among the poorest people in the world. imagine a graduate being paid two million Leones, less than two hundred dollars ($200 ) a month. Imagine having to grovel just to get a job you deserve, imagine watching other people getting the jobs you deserve simply because they know somebody. We can do better than this for the future generations. We definitely must do better for our children.
All said and done, education in general needs to be given the respect that it deserves, the dignity of everyone involved in the process must be upheld and the reward for all that hardwork must be attractive. This should be a food for thought for decision Makers. I cannot complete this piece without talking about integrity. This is a job for parents, can we put an effort into raising children with integrity? Because the truth is that integrity is the backbone for all the change we need to make in this country
Thank you for reading.
Lyoa Sourced 
You said it all👌.This should be open for national discourse and recommendations, we need to do better as a nation.
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