Many Sierra Leoneans were of the conviction that the president’s decision in pronouncing quality and free education was to create an enabling environment wherein the structures of a good educational foundation will be put in place so that the onetime sinking educational system will surely resurrect to its former glory. However, it sounds ironic to many that the current system of education in Sierra Leone is nothing good to write home about.
Corruption which is a canker worm to any development aspect has today engulfed the educational landscape of Sierra Leone to the extent that questions of external examinations meant to evaluate the output of students, are licked out before the actual date and time of the examination.
Public examination is poorly supervised due to the involvement of teachers and other examination stakeholders who were alleged by people living around exams centres of receiving bribe from students with the promise of relaxing examination rules. In as much as these bunch of crocks are with the basic awareness that those examinations are important in the development of the individual and society as well, yet for their personal aggrandizement they will heed no attention to that.
It is also surprising and paradoxical that at a time when the president has declared free and quality education as a priority saw an increased level of uninterrupted examination malpractice, high fees, fake students loan scheme, low motivation of staff and the non-issuance of grant in aid etc.
The people of Sierra Leone are expecting heads to roll at this moment for all the havoc that has been caused in the educational sector. The Ministry of Basic and Higher Education, Tertiary Education Commission, Teaching Service Commission, Parliamentary Committees on both Basic and Tertiary Education must account to the people of Sierra Leone for the poor delivery of education to the citizens.
It is also glaringly clear that the Anti-Corruption Commission is snail pacing the expedition of corruption matters especially those that has to do with educational issues, thus it incumbent on the Anti- graft commission to speedily investigate and prosecute government officials that are holding the development of education into ransom.
