By: Steven Dorbor
Monrovia Liberia – Education Minister, Ansu Sonii, says the World Bank’s support to the education sector will play a major role in alleviating challenges confronting the sector.
Ministers Sonii said the challenges at the Senior Secondary Education level, such as girls’ enrollment, completion rate, graduation rate, among others, will be significantly reduced under the project.
He said by May 31, 2020, data on the quality of schools, learning environment, drop- out rate, as well as teacher abandonment rate, employment of qualify teachers, among others, will be available.
The Education Ministry Boss was speaking Thursday at the launch of a forty- seven million United States dollar grant under the theme, Improving Results in Secondary Education (IRISE) Project at a local hotel in Monrovia.
Also making remarks at the launch, World Bank Country Director, Khwima Nthara, declared that the IRISE Project plays a cardinal role in human capacity development.
Mr. Nthara also said statistics proves that access to Senior Secondary Education in Liberia is still low and in-equitable, with fifteen out of one hundred girls, enrolled in primary school, advance to senior secondary level.
Khwima Nthara said the IRISE Project is a vital project that seeks to address one of the most crucial pathways to poverty reduction and shared prosperity which is education.
Manager Nthara stated that education empowers people to take advantage of various income earning opportunities and makes them better equipped to deal with various other challenges in their lives.
“This needs to change since senior secondary education provides a critical foundation for the development of skilled workers, people cannot be truly empowered if they have not attained more than primary education, and Liberia’s economic transformation will critically depend on having a skilled workforce,” Manager Nthara added.
He emphasized that the project will benefit about 140,000 students and 6,800 teachers respectively, 156 public and community senior secondary schools and provide scholarship to about 3,000 girls