Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0314/03148.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 30KB | 478 lines

$Unique_ID{COW03148}
$Pretitle{380}
$Title{Sierra Leone
Chapter 7A.   Education}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Irving Kaplan}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{education
schools
school
secondary
year
primary
government
students
university
college}
$Date{1976}
$Log{}
Country:     Sierra Leone
Book:        Sierra Leone, A Country Study
Author:      Irving Kaplan
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1976

Chapter 7A.   Education

     The formal educational system encompasses all levels from primary school
through postgraduate university studies, although in the mid-1970s advanced
work in certain fields was not yet available within the country. In this
system the role of the central government was largely an indirect one
involving policy formulation, standards, and financial support. Actual
operations were carried out almost entirely by local authorities and voluntary
organizations functioning with a great deal of decisionmaking freedom.

     In 1961 Sierra Leone subscribed to the target, set that year by the
Conference of African Ministers of Education in Addis Ababa, of six years of
compulsory primary education, to be achieved by 1980. Significant advances
have been made in providing opportunities for primary education since that
time, but the target has been found overly high in light of the country's
economic and human resources. In the mid-1970s at most somewhat more than one
of every three children of primary school age could find a place in school,
and admission was usually on a first-come-first-served basis. In particular,
accessibility of primary education to rural children, who constituted the vast
majority of the school-age population, remained quite limited, and illiteracy
continued at a high rate. School fees, which were a burden for many parents,
also continued to be collected generally, and there appeared little immediate
likelihood that they could be dispensed with.

     An important question faced by educational authorities and planners in
the 1970s has been how to introduce greater relevance to the country's
economic and social realities into education, particularly primary and
secondary education. The educational system is permeated by pre-World War II
British academic traditions, and primary and secondary education are viewed by
most students and parents as steps in the educational ladder to the university
matriculation they hope for. Thus curricula continue to be aimed chiefly at
passing examinations, although a start was made in the early 1970s toward
providing some practical education for those who will leave school after
completing secondary education. Significant changes have been proposed for
primary education also, but the likelihood that any major reorientation will
become effective before the end of the decade appears small.

     Expanding higher education has reduced the need for non-Sierra Leoneans
in upper level positions and is resulting in a growing intellectual community
that has been further supplemented by persons returning from abroad. In the
creative arts a number of Sierra Leoneans have attained repute as writers and
poets, and new faces in the mid-1970s gave some promise of continued
development. Plastic arts of note, however, remained largely the domain of the
occasional traditional sculptor in wood, whose artistry in the carving of
masks and ritual objects gave him an acknowledged reputation in his community.

EDUCATION: THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

     Institutionalized Western education was introduced into the Colony (see
Glossary) of Sierra Leone by black immigrants who came from Nova Scotia in
1792, scarcely five years after the initial settlers from Great Britain had
arrived (see ch. 2). The Nova Scotians included teachers, and a school was
started the same year. Other schools were soon opened, and by later 1793 as
many as 300 children were in attendance. Thereafter education expanded as the
Colony grew in numbers. The area that forms the greater part of modern-day
Sierra Leone, however, did not participate to any extent in education along
Western lines until well over 100 years later, considerably after the
establishment of the Protectorate (see Glossary) in 1896.

     The Sierra Leone Company, which took control of the Colony in the early
1790, assumed the responsibility for providing education, treating it as part
of the regular cost of Colony operations. This practice was continued by the
British government when the territory became a crown colony in 1808. The
establishment of mission schools after the arrival of the Church Missionary
Society (CMS) in 1804 and the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society in 1810
coincided with a feeling in Great Britain that government should have only a
minimal responsibility for education. At least partly as a result the colonial
administration in 1815 arranged to turn over the operation of most government
schools to the CMS but continued to pay teacher salaries. This arrangement
lasted until 1827, by which time over twenty schools were attended by some
2,100 students. This period was followed by an interlude of renewed government
controls that lasted until 1840.

     Religious instruction was not given in the government schools during this
period, and the CMS began establishing its own schools, as did the Methodist
mission in a more limited way. By 1840 there were about thirty mission schools
and fourteen government schools that together had an enrollment of 8,000 to
9,000 students. Denominational religious instruction began to dominate mission
education, however, and competition for communicants appears to have become a
more important goal than the imparting of useful knowledge. Baptist, Roman
Catholic, United Methodist Free Church, and other groups entered the scene
during the next two decades. School attendance varied greatly as schools
opened and closed, but by the beginning of the 1860s well over eighty schools
were operating and had a reported combined enrollment of more than 12,000
students. The paramount position of the missions in education that evolved at
this time was to continue throughout the nineteenth century, and mission
education remained an important factor in the mid-twentieth century.

     Secondary education got its start in 1845 when the CMS opened the Sierra
Leone Grammar School (patterned after the British Latin grammar schools of the
time) for boys and the Female Education Institution (from 1865 the Annie Walsh
Memorial School) for girls. The Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society opened a
secondary school in 1874, and privately founded schools were established in
1880 and 1884. These and later schools were almost all in Freetown; it was not
until the establishment of a government secondary school at Bo in 1937 that
the Protectorate had secondary education.

     In the 100 years between 1845 and 1945 eighteen secondary schools were
opened. Several offered vocational and industrial studies, but by 1945 the
eleven schools still functioning, including two government schools, prepared
students only along traditional grammar school lines, although the
government's Prince of Wales secondary school in Freetown emphasized work in
science. The disappearance of the non-Latin schools reflected the general
public attitude toward vocational as opposed to academic training, an attitude
that continued to be prevalent in the mid-1970s.

     Advanced education was offered even before the establishment of the first
secondary schools, which were set up in considerable part to meet the gap
between the primary schools and the higher level Christian Institution
established at Fourah Bay in 1827. Later named Fourah Bay College, this school
was the first in West Africa to provide studies leading to a degree.

     In the hinterland beyond the Colony, efforts to establish mission
stations and schools were greatly hampered throughout the 1800s by a lack of
transport and also by tribal warfare. As a result schools were located mainly
along the coast or at a few places on inland waterways. Amo