The recent dispiriting news that no single candidate passed this year’s University of Liberia admission examination, out of some 25.000 who sat the paper, highlights the terrible lasting effects of that country’s brutal civil war, which ended almost a decade ago.
The state-funded institution, one of two public universities in the country, says it deplores the situation that students do not have the foundation to answer some of the most basic questions in the exam. “In English, the mechanics of the language, they didn’t know anything about it,” said university spokesman Momodu Getaweh.
As plausible as that explanation sounds, Education Minister Etmonia David-Tarpeh has strongly objected, and pledged to meet university authorities to discuss the issue.
She said: “I know there are a lot of weaknesses in the schools but for a whole group of people to take exams and every single one of them to fail, I have my doubts about that. It’s like mass murder.”
The minister, who said she was familiar with some of the students and the schools involved, warned that no Liberian school would just “give people grades. I’d really like to see the results of the students.”
Whatever the outcome, it’s certain that Liberia’s education system – as President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said recently – remains “in a mess” since the war. And it’s urgent action, not a war of words, that’s needed to fix the system.
