By Henry Kargbo
The Statistics Sierra Leone (Stats-SL) has on Wednesday 1st March 2023 concluded a three-day extensive training for enumerators and supervisors to commence the evaluation of free quality school education programme of government.
In his statement the Director of National Statistical System Division of Stats-SL Francis Tommy said that this survey basically aimed at assessing the impact of free quality school education programme of the current government which is their flagship.
Tommy stated that Stats-SL being the institution responsible for collecting credible and reliable data has been approached by World Bank to carry out this exercise across the country together with Ministry of Basic and Senior School Education.
He continued that the supervisors and the enumerators they have trained would go out and collect data in all sixteen-district including Western Urban and Rural for government and development partners to use for policy formulation in education sector.
He said the survey would give them an opportunity to ascertain the successes and challenges of implementing the free quality school education programme for the last four year.
He therefore urged participants to perform quality data collection as government through Stat-SL and donor partners rely on them on this exercise even though the technical monitoring team Stats-SL, MBSSE and the World Bank would be moving around to see how the exercise will be going on in the field. He also informed the participants that Stats-SL is not known for unreliable data, this according to him their institution is known for quality and credible data. So they would not compromise such an accolade.
Abdul S. Bakar Data Analyst from MBSSE highlighted on drastic improvement the ministry has gain over the four years since the launching of free quality school education in September 2018. This according to the enrolment has increased exponentially, building of more classrooms, provision of core textbooks, and provision of teaching and learning materials for teachers, recruit more teachers and improve their conditions of service.
He went on to say when the enumerators go to the field they would see for themselves and realized that 22% of national budget on education has not been wasted.
Sallieu Mansaray Senior Statistician stated that they have trained seventy two numerators and twenty six supervisors that would go through the survey for the Free Quality Education Project.
He added that the trainer will collect data screen the data and sent them to the headquarters for final approval, adding that the survey will start on Monday 6th march 2023, and run up to twenty days after the twenty days they will published the final results about the FQE project which the public will know about the success, challenges.
