Pillar Three
Our Pillars
HUMAN CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT
During the Unity Party-led administration, Liberia made significant interventions aimed at addressing the challenges in the educational sector to increase access to education. Educational facilities were restored and new ones established throughout the country to give children opportunities to enroll in schools. Several community colleges were established to offer opportunities for post- secondary education.
However, under current government, the imperative ingredients of quality, equity, management and relevance that characterize an effective education system remain weak. Liberia’s human development outcomes remain comparatively low (153 out of 157), with an HCI score of 0.31 according to the World Bank’s 2020 Human Capital Index (HCI). These outcomes are results of numerous challenges the educational sector faces.
Our educational system is replete with many challenges that affect not just access but also quality. There is an acute shortage of trained teachers in basic and secondary education, which reflects the low output of Rural Teachers’ Training Institutes (RTTIs). While the pupil-teacher ratios remain modest in basic and secondary schools, the trained teachers are in low supply. For instance, the share of trained teachers is 35% in Early Child Education (ECE), 45% in primary, 31% in junior high and 26% in senior high schools (Liberia ESA, 2021). The shortage of trained teachers in basic and secondary education puts the pursuit of quality education in serious jeopardy, as the pupil-qualified-teacher ratios are soaring across the four levels of the educational sector. One of the main causes of teacher attrition is poor compensation package as compared to the income level of other sectors in the economy.
Non-prioritization has hampered efforts to operationalize policy commitments for children with disabilities. Educational services for children with disabilities (CwD) are largely delivered by Development Partners (DP), or through the government grants allocated to institutions for students with specific disabilities. But government financial commitment has declined in recent years with just over 90,000 USD (less than one percent of the overall education budget) spent in 2019 on institutions providing educational services to children with specific needs.