International Development Journalism Competition: Education: A Right or a Privilege
On the road out of Freetown, Sierra Leone's bustling capital, lines of painted shacks gradually recede into banana groves, sugar-cane plantations and land blackened by recent slash-and-burn farming. The number of young people working in the rice fields is immediately striking. Processions of children march along the road, balancing piles of dried palm leaves on their heads. Moses Marah, who is guiding me around the remote Northern Province, shrugs: "This is what it is like – children must work to help their families".
In 2004, Sierra Leone made education up to the age of 13 free and compulsory but many children, particularly those in rural areas, still have no access to schools. 72 million children worldwide are in the same position. The second Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of education for all by 2015 is far from being achieved.
Sierra Leone ranks among the lowest in the UNDP's Human Development Index. The life expectancy is 48 and the average adult has only 2.9 years of schooling. 80 percent of people live in rural areas, often in extreme poverty. Those attending school are often malnourished, and are therefore less able to concentrate and less likely to develop basic learning capacities. According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the rural-urban educational disparity is the main obstacle to universal primary education.
Access to education in rural parts of Sierra Leone is limited by the severe lack of schools and qualified teachers. In 2003, writer Aminatta Forna set up a primary school in Rogbonko, a village that her grandfather founded almost a century ago. Until then, children had to walk five miles to the nearest school, swimming across a river that flooded in the rainy season, during which only the bigger children could manage the journey.
Remote villages are often prohibitively far away from their closest schools, and irregular attendance and drop-outs are common. With Forna's help Rogbonko was able to train its own teachers, but few rural communities can afford the government's distance-learning scheme. Horatio Nelson-Williams, the coordinator of Sierra Leone's Education For All programme, acknowledges that "one of the major challenges is to get qualified teachers to teach in rural schools". Schools are also desperately short of materials. Forna gives surplus donated books to other rural schools: "They have absolutely nothing".
The language divide is a further obstacle to rural education. The national curriculum is taught in English and in Rogbonko, where the villagers speak Temne, the learning process is slow: "It's very hard for children to be taught in English", says Forna, "it takes them so long to get to the point where they understand anything".
Sierra Leone was once a bastion of Western-style education. In the early 19th century, the rate of primary school attendance in Freetown was higher than it was in Britain. From its founding as a settlement for freed slaves, education has been a preserve of the urban elite, distancing them from the indigenous rural population. After independence in 1961, this division was deepened by decades of dictatorial misrule. Rural people saw little of the profits from the diamonds they produced and public services were all but non-existent.
Twenty years ago, Sierra Leone's President Momoh declared that education was a privilege, not a right. As the country plunged into a ten-year civil war, it was a privilege denied to most of the population. Almost 1,300 primary schools – an estimated 70 percent – were destroyed during the conflict, mainly in rural areas where the rebel Revolutionary United Front could easily prey on villages for food and child conscripts. When the war ended in 2002, 67 percent of children had no education.
Some of the lucky ones spent their childhoods across the border in Guinean refugee camps. Moses, 25, is now struggling to save up for university. He remembers his time in Guinea fondly: "I learned lots of languages and got a basic education. I would not have learned anything if I had stayed in Sierra Leone".
The Ministry of Education now accepts "the right of all children to quality primary education", as embodied in the MDGs. But the former dictator's words still ring true in much of the country. Many rural families survive on subsistence farming and rely on their children to work the land or perform domestic duties. The FAO points out that "hunger is highly correlated with educational deprivation", but parents have more immediate concerns about food security, especially during the 'hungry season'.
In Rogbonko, nestled deep in the forest, crowds of children sit in dusty circles weaving baskets. They pound rice or palm kernels and haul their baby siblings around on their hips like miniature mothers while their parents work on the communal farms. Initially, the plan was to educate one child from each household, but the school was inundated with entire families eager to learn. The school cannot teach all the village children, but it ensures that everyone it enrols stays to the end.
Since its emergence from civil war ten years ago, Sierra Leone's educational prospects have improved. 69 percent of children now attend primary school. Yet, at the current rate of progress it is difficult to imagine how the second MDG will be fulfilled by 2015. UNICEF estimates that 300,000 children of primary school age in Sierra Leone are still out of school. A much larger number never set foot in a secondary school.
Education is widely accepted as the best route out of poverty for developing countries. It increases economic activity, boosts gender equality, stimulates social productivity and reduces mortality. Poor and post-conflict countries like Sierra Leone cannot provide comprehensive education on their own. Nevertheless, Forna is hopeful: "I think [universal education] is achievable", although she would like to see more government-driven progress. The success of Rogbonko's school is an example of a rural community claiming its right to education. It is up to the government and its international sponsors to deliver that right to every child, wherever they live.
This feature was written for the Guardian International Development Journalism competition before 13 June 2011.