Audit Report Exposes FQE Lapses
The 2019 Auditor General Report has undressed the most trumpeted Free Quality Education (FQE) which is the flagship programme of the New Direction government of President Julius Maada Bio. In Page 344 of the 2019 Audit Report stated that the implementation of the Free Quality Education (FQSE) Programme even though the Presidential Declaration of the Free Quality Education (FQSE) has taken two years, they observed that there was no policy or guidelines for the effective implementation of the programme, adding that their review of the implementation of the FQSE programme in selected schools in the Western Area revealed that the Teaching and Learning Materials (TLM) were supplied to local councils without guidelines or policies for their distribution and handling.
The report continued that there was no equal distribution of exercise books to all pupils. “In some schools, pupils were given four, five, six or seven exercise books as the case may be. Some of the schools lacked storage facilities to properly store the TLMs. Books were found in the open and on the bare floor; some were even covered in dusts. Some core textbooks (Integrated Science and Social Studies) received by schools were not distributed to pupils, but rather being held up in cupboards and in boxes. Our interviews with principals of these schools revealed that there was no clarity from the Ministry on the use of these books; some of the principals perceived the books to be distributed to every pupil whilst some considered them as resource materials for the schools since the books were not enough to be distributed to each pupil in their respective schools”. 2019 Auditor General Report revealed.
The report further disclosed that due to the lack of adequate data on school’s requirements and enrolment, some pupils were not supplied with core textbooks (Mathematics and English Language), adding that interviews conducted with the Coordinator of “Leh We Lan” project (the European Union’s contractors for the procurement and distributions of core textbooks) revealed that the data used for the procurement of core textbooks for the junior and senior secondary schools were based on the 2017 school census report and was far below the enrolment into schools after the declaration of the FQE in 2018.
By Emmanuel I. Kamara
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