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Ending corruption in education in Sierra Leone

After a decade of civil war the education sector in Sierra Leone is facing great difficulties. There is widespread corruption. Teaching materials are stolen and teachers receive their salaries only after civil servants have taken their percentage. Sub-standard teachers are in charge of classes with too many students. Most pupils are barely literate when they leave school.

Sierra Leonean civil society activists are working to improve accountability. The National Accountability Group (NAG) – the local chapter of Transparency International – used a Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) to find out what had happened to school fee subsidies and learning materials designated for a sample of 28 schools in a rural district.

NAG’s survey came after an earlier Ministry of Finance PETS revealed startling figures about education corruption. In 2002 researchers found that 45.1 percent of the funds for school fees subsidies were unaccounted for and that nearly 28 percent of teaching and learning materials had disappeared.

The subsequent study indicated a significant improvement in the delivery of funds and equipment. This is due to the recruitment of an independent auditing company, KPMG, to manage the disbursement of funds and of Plan International, an international non-governmental organisation, to oversee distribution of teaching materials. KPMG charges a ten percent commission and an additional fee for delivering assistance to each school.

Interviews with teachers and pupils showed that the education sector continues to have problems and there is little incentive for educated people to enter the profession. NAG reports that:

Central government support is grossly inadequate: pupils’ families have to pay for desks and chairs.
School fee subsidies are only US$0.70 per child per term, making a joke of the government’s promise of ‘free education for all’.
Because materials are provided based on the previous year’s enrolment figure, teachers are sometimes forced to distribute them to larger numbers of pupils than was originally intended.
Community members suspect that some head teachers sell portions of the received materials to supplement their incomes.

The Local Government Act of 2004 heralds new prospects for governance in Sierra Leone as 19 local councils assume responsibility for key aspects of service delivery, including health and education. Decentralisation and transparent local administrations could produce enormous benefits for schools, though this ultimately depends upon the vigilance of civil society and official recognition of the importance of community participation.

NAG calls for a nationwide PETS on education and recommends that:

KPMG should not receive such a large administration fee.
Headteachers should keep proper accounts of expenditure and materials received.
Procedures for paying salaries should be made more transparent and reasons for late payments identified.
Research should be undertaken to discover the scale of the extra charges taken from pupils and the circumstances under which teachers demand them.
NGOs must play the lead role in investigating corruption: the Anti-Corruption Commission cannot do so as the post of commissioner is a presidential appointment and the office is therefore politicised.
NGOs need to work together and avoid duplication.

Source(s):
‘Expenditure Tracking: Detecting Leakages at Primary Schools’ by Salia Kpaka and Joshua Klemm, pages 70-76, in ‘Stealing the Future, Corruption in the Classroom: Ten Real World Experiences’, Transparency International, edited by Bettina Meier and Michael Griffin, 2005 Full document.

Funded by: German Ministry for Economic Co-operation and Development (BMZ)

id21 Research Highlight: 26 June 2006

Further Information:
National Accountability Group
P.O. Box 1312,
Freetown, Sierra Leone

Tel: +232-22-240995
Fax: +232-22-241054
Contact the contributor: nag@sierratel.sl

National Accountability Group

Transparency International
Alt Moabit 96
10559 Berlin
Germany

Tel: +49 30343 8200 Fax +49 303470 3912
Contact the contributor: ti@transparency.org

Transparency International

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