Human Capital Development was at the centre of Sierra Leone’s Medium-Term National Development Plan (MTNDP) 2019–2023 and also a key initiative of the new MTNDP 2024–2030, which focuses on the government’s Big Five Game Changers. Goal two of the plan foresees a nation with “a highly-skilled, healthy, inclusive, and gender-sensitive labour force with a sustained share of middle-level manpower and highly developed talents for professional jobs in the private sector and the civil service by 2030.” This will be made possible through solid investments in education, notably the government’s Free Quality School Education (FQSE) Programme. As a government policy, the FQSE Programme aimed to increase access to quality pre-primary, primary, and secondary schooling and school-level technical and vocational education and training while improving learning. With increased enrolments arising from the introduction of FQSE, school subsidies are necessary to reduce the financial burden on parents and improve access and quality of schooling through the provision of critical inputs to support access, equity and completion quality, relevance, integrity, and system strengthening of the delivery of basic education in Sierra Leone.
As part of the FQSE, for example, the government is to support quality education by providing quality textbooks for core subjects, teaching and learning materials, school registers and other non-teaching resources, classroom/school infrastructure and furniture, and salaries for teachers on the government payroll. Subsidies are, therefore, intended to cover additional costs that otherwise would have been covered by parents in the form of approved tuition fees. Citizens need to understand the accessibility and operationalization of the school fee subsidy. The 2019–2023 Medium-Term National Development Plan laid the foundation for the eligibility for subsidy. The plan noted, “The phased approach in the implementation of the Free Quality School Education (FQSE) Programme means pupils benefitting in the first phase will only be those attending government and government-assisted schools.” Thus, only government and government-assisted schools can receive subsidies, while private/independent schools are ineligible. Further, in line with the School Approval Guidelines, to be eligible for government financial support, all schools must obtain level one approval (to operate) and apply for level two approval (to receive subsidies from the Government of Sierra Leone).
The School Approval Guidelines clearly articulate the criteria, including additional criteria that must be met to secure approvals for levels one and two. School authorities should refer to the Approval Guidelines to understand eligibility criteria. At a minimum, schools aspiring to receive subsidies should be safe and able to obtain and administer government funding competently. To reduce the cost of schooling for parents through tuition fee waivers in government and government-assisted schools, schools benefiting from subsidies are not allowed to charge additional tuition fees to parents.
The total subsidy amount payable to a school is based on enrollment numbers. The number of pupils in a school determines the amount a school receives through a fixed per-child calculation: Primary (le 10,000), Junior Secondary (le 50,000), and Senior Secondary (le 60,000). The subsidy amount will be reviewed periodically when the need arises. Data from the Annual School Census will inform the subsidy allocation per school. Actual enrolments for the new school year will be provided to the District Education Officer by 15 November each year. The subsidy is disbursed termly, with payment expected before or during the start of a new term. School heads will be required to ensure attendance is monitored throughout the year to ensure the accuracy of enrolment data, which will feed into the data collected as part of the monitoring visits. School heads providing false enrolment numbers risk being dismissed.
The school subsidies are so significant that they are used for school maintenance, including maintenance of school furniture, provision of remedial lessons for students needing additional support/further strengthening, payment of utilities for schools with such facilities, provision of and maintenance of separate WASH facilities for male and female students inclusive of children with disabilities, provision of bridging classes for disadvantaged students, and an acceptable intervention from the school that would contribute towards improving access and/or completion in the school predominantly for girls, children with disabilities, and children from rural areas. It goes without saying that school subsidies significantly reduce the cost of schooling for parents/guardians and, at the same time, improve access to quality education, which the government must treat with utmost importance. The most outstanding obstacle to the realisation of these incredible benefits is the late disbursement of school fee subsidies.
The persistent late disbursement, espoused by the Sierra Leone Teachers Union, will severely hamper the education sector. School authorities will be tempted to demand payment from poor and vulnerable parents to run the schools. This can potentially affect the quality and standard of education, derailing the government’s aspiration of educational transformation and human capital development. The school fee subsidies and other educational expenditures warranted the government to allocate NLe 3.0 billion for Education, comprising over 20% of the 2024 Total Budget.
We are calling on the government to priorities’ tuition fee subsidies in education expenditures and the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Basic and Senior Education to adopt rigorous transparency and accountability measures in its operations with particular reference to budget implementation, curb the misuse of funds allocated to education, and ensure the timely allocation of school subsidies to schools that will ultimately lessen the school fee payment burden on poor and vulnerable parents.
Signed.
Brima Sesay
Country Lead, BudgIT Foundation, Sierra Leone