Effective monitoring to improve the quality of teaching and learning in Freetown

Globally there has been a push towards improved access to basic schooling. Over the past three decades across Africa, although the percentage of primary-aged children out-of-school has been halved, they are not learning (World Bank Education Statistics, 2017). The World Bank calls this ‘the global learning crisis’. In Sierra Leone, 96% of young women who have completed 6 years of schooling cannot read a basic grade 1 level sentence (Pritchett and Sandefur, 2017, based on DHS Surveys). Research in to the key drivers of underperformance highlight the impact of low quality teaching and weak accountability (World Development Report, 2017).

In Freetown, although all primary and junior secondary schools within the city are under the purview of Freetown City Council (FCC), in practice FCC has no school monitoring system in place. Schools are not routinely supervised and are only rarely inspected, resulting in a lack of the necessary oversight and accountability. The limited inspection data is focused on basic administrative information only, not on the information required to monitor how well schools are operating and to drive change.

The aim of this project therefore is to improve FCC’s capacity to oversee and support schools within the city. FCC will be equipped with an effective system to monitor and ultimately improve the quality of education delivery within primary and junior secondary schools in Freetown City.