"Liberia Education System is a mess"-President Sirleaf says!
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has branded Liberia's education system "a mess" requiring a complete overhaul, days after all 25,000 high school students sitting state university entrance exams failed.
University authorities last week said not a single university applicant had achieved the minimum grade for admission, highlighting one of the many problems facing the country 10 years after the end of a devastating civil war.
"The students' failure did not come from the university, but rather from the schools that prepared them. The result is alarming," Sirleaf said in a statement late on Wednesday.
"It tells me that the educational system is a mess."
Sirleaf said problems had been identified during meetings with stakeholders and fixing them would require a complete overhaul of Liberia's education system.
Primary and secondary schools, like many of the country's institutions, collapsed during Liberia's intermittent 14-year civil war, which killed an estimated 250,000 people.
Nelson Sahwolo, vice-president for student affairs at the University of Liberia, said the university was eventually forced to lower the pass grade to allow some 1,600 students to be admitted.
"We had set a passing mark for English at 70, while we set the passing grade for mathematics at 50. No one could get those marks," Sahwolo said.
Liberia has two state-run universities - The University of Liberia and William V.S. Tubman University. The University of Liberia, created in 1862, is among the oldest institutions of higher learning in West Africa.
The Economist Intelligence Unit has issued a report on Saturday saying that Egyptian universities and schools have witnessed 1,122 students' protests since the commencement of the academic year in September.
The Unit's Democracy Index report said that during November, Egypt's educational institutions witnessed a remarkable upsurge in the students' protests where nearly 511 protests have been staged with an average of 17 protests a day; recording an increase of 26 per cent compared to October when 378 protests were staged.
The report explained that "Al Azhar University topped the list of academic institutions with 101 students' protests in November followed by the University of Cairo with 52 protests, while the University of Alexandria came third with 46 protests, and the University of Helwan fourth with 34 protests."
According to the report, the main demand of the students' protests in November was for the release of university professors who had been arrested during protests in support of ousted President Mohamed Morsi.
The students' political demands represented 88 per cent of the total demands in November, while educational issues represented 12 per cent. The educational demands included admission procedures, transfer procedures to other universities and reduction of students' accommodation fees.
The report explained that the protests usually began peacefully before erupting into violence, which resulted in the deaths of two students, injury of several others and burning of several police vehicles in November. In total, there have been 67 clashes between students and police.