…The Story of the Mulbah Town Public School in Bomi County

-By Sam Z. Zota, Jr.

Marvee Kamara is the Principal while Mabudu K. Folley serves as the Vice Principal for Instruction (VPI). But the two men double as teachers for the one-hundred and nine (109) students at the Mulbah Town Public School, an elementary school in Bomi County. The number of students is likely to increase as registration is still ongoing. The school has an enrolment record of between one-sixty (160) to two hundred (200) students per semester.

While Mabudu who also serves as registrar is in charge of the Early Childhood Education (ECE), Marvee is busy from class to class, assigning daily lessons to students from grades one to six. The same is repeated during the administration of tests for the students.

“What we do here is, when I give lesson to the first graders, I move to the next class and do the same, and when I finish giving lesson to all the classes, I go back in the same order to start explaining the lesson,” said Marvee. The school runs from 8am to 1 pm. The utter disregard for place in assigning instructors and prioritizing needs could most likely serve as a contributing factor for this dreadful situation. The “one size fits all” approach that identifies a set of rules and ignores differences from place has affected education in rural Liberia.

As if having only two instructors is not enough, supplies allocated to the school to enhance the learning process are also inadequate. The school receives two boxes of chalks as supplies from the Ministry of Education through the office of the District Education Officer (DEO) yearly.

Marvee cited the lack of instructors and educational supplies as the major challenges confronting the school. Except for the latrine, the school edifice was recently painted through a school grant from the Global Partnership for Education (GPE). The GPE grant is usually disbursed by two installments at 60 and 40 percent. The total expected grant for the Mulbah Town Public School is eight-hundred United States dollars ($800USD) for the semester 2021/2022. The Mulbah Town Public School was constructed in 2017 at a cost of One Hundred and Ten Thousand United States Dollars (US$ 110,000.00) as one of the many projects implemented with the CSDF received from 2013-2017.

The situation is not unique to the Mulbah Town Public School, as most public schools across Liberia are faced with similar, some even worse, situations with students sitting on the floor to acquire education, a basic human right. Despite this, the Ministry of Education has been on a campaign massively retiring teachers. 

The Education Reform Act of 2011 obligates the Government to providing and ensuring access to, and increasing availability of high quality educational opportunities for all citizens and residents without prejudice. Unfortunately, the pace to achieving the Education Reform Act is rather slow.