Schools Are Becoming Accessible to All Here

Despite its health and social hurdles, Sierra Leone is putting its faith in its children by undertaking an education revolution, paving the way for other poor countries to make schooling more equal.

The African country allocates more than 20% of its national budget to education – teacher pay, school renovation, and other education expenses – which has resulted in a 50% increase in enrollment and an apparent improvement in the education’s quality, and impoverished children are the ones who benefit the most from such changes.

Since 2018, Sierra Leone has banned school fees, outlawed corporal punishment in schools, and increased investment in education. The government is tackling educational problems with bold and promising measures even though the revolution is far from being completed – the initiatives are enforced in the capital but have yet to reach remote villages. Among those initiatives, there is a series of randomized controlled trials that test different approaches to schooling. According to the World Bank, 70% of 10-year-olds in poor and middle-income countries are incapable of reading a simple text. In Nigeria, for example, some 75% of children aged 7 to 14 cannot read a simple sentence. Sierra Leone is shaping up to be a model for very poor countries, proving that with determination and leadership, schooling can be drastically improved.