Liberia’s bold experiment in school reform

AT A school in the township of West Point, Monrovia, a teacher should be halfway through her maths lesson. Instead she is eating lunch. A din echoes around the room of the government-run school as 70 pupils chat, fidget or sleep on their desks. Neither these pupils nor the rest of Liberia is learning much. Bad teaching, a lack of accountability and a meagre budget have led to awful schools. Fourteen years of civil war and, more recently, the Ebola virus have stymied reforms. Children’s prospects are shocking. More than one-third of second-grade pupils cannot read a word; since many are held back, teenagers often share classes with six year olds (see chart). In 2014 only 13 candidates out of 15,000 passed an entrance exam to the University of Liberia. In 2013 none did.

George Werner admits that when he was made education minister in 2015, “my heart sank.” But he soon got to work. He removed 1,892 dead or retired teachers from the government’s payroll, saving $3.3m or 7% of the tiny education budget ($45.6m). In September Mr Werner went further, launching Partnership Schools for Liberia (PSL), a pilot which, if successful, could inspire similar innovation across Africa.

PSL is based on charter schools in America and academies in England. In each case independent operators run free schools that are at least partly funded by the government. In the PSL scheme eight operators, three of which are for-profit groups, have taken over a total of 93 public schools. A randomised controlled trial will analyse whether their pupils do better than peers in traditional schools.

But just six months in, PSL is under fire. Education International, a global group of teachers’ unions, and ActionAid, a charity, are funding an investigation into the programme. Their opposition is partly ideological: they do not like for-profit schools. But two of their concerns are pertinent—indeed, Mr Werner and the researchers evaluating the PSL project also recognise them.

The first is that the PSL schools play by different rules. There is a cap of 65 on most of their class sizes, for example, which has prompted allegations that some operators are turfing out less clever pupils. That would be unfair and against the rules of the pilot. But even if it were happening, it would not alter the results of the evaluation. Justin Sandefur of the Centre for Global Development, the research group leading the trial, notes that operators will be held accountable for the results of all children originally at the pilot schools—including any who were later turned away.

The second concern is cost. The government pays for teachers’ salaries. Operators also receive $50 per pupil per year from a pot of philanthropic cash managed by the ministry and Ark, a London-based education charity. Most spend extra money on top of that. Operators have submitted estimates of their costs ranging from $60 to more than $1,000 per child per year.

For Mr Werner, questions about the cost of the project are most acute when he considers the role of Bridge International Academies. Bridge, a chain of for-profit schools, has raised $140m from investors such as Mark Zuckerberg. But it is not close to breaking even, losing about $1m a month as a result of its high fixed costs, such as having a research team in America.

One way Bridge is trying to turn a profit is to run public schools as well as private ones. Liberia is thus a test case. As part of the pilot, Bridge runs 25 schools there, more than any other provider. Josh Nathan, Bridge’s academic director in Liberia, said that the firm would like to cover all 2,700 schools around the country.

Charles Cooper, a Liberian businessman, speaks for many sceptics of the Bridge method. He says the scripts, which teachers read from tablet devices, are like a “lobotomy”, as teachers no longer have to think for themselves. The scripts are bossy: teachers must “write today’s date” and “erase the board”, for example. But Bridge says these ensure that teachers teach.

Bridge’s financial model is more worrying than its pedagogical one. It is seeking $9m from its philanthropic backers for its work in Liberia (about $1,000 per pupil). Around $5.5m of its proposed budget for Liberia is for staff costs for employees outside the country. The success of PSL does not rely on that of only one group, but such figures raise doubts about whether Bridge can ever run a cheap enough operation in a place like Liberia.

Susannah Hares of Ark says that higher costs in PSL’s early years are not necessarily a sign of failure. Per-pupil spending should come down as costs are spread across more sites. But she adds that if the pilot is to expand widely there must be evidence that the world’s fourth-poorest country can afford it, even with money from donors. (Liberia receives more in aid—$842m in 2014—than its gross national income of $720m.)

On February 22 Mr Werner announced that, from September, PSL would add another 100 or so schools. Expansion would irk critics. But they should remember how bad things are. Far too many education ministers choose to accept the status quo. PSL is an experiment, and one worth trying. Unfortunately, with an election due in October, a new government could scrap the scheme. In Liberia, where exams are proving too tough for too many, that would represent the biggest failure of all.