A report from Northern Sierra Leone indicated that there were loud cries among not only pupils who took the 2022 West Africa Senior Schools Certificate Examination (WASSCE) exercise at the Marampa Academy Senior Secondary School in Masiaka Town, but parents of the said pupils were also spotted crying and questioning education officials as to what reason lead to the seizure of results of their children in the midst of His Excellency Retired Brigadier Julius Maada Bio Free Quality Education (FQE).
During the course of our investigation, Central Base Journalists Sierra Leone (CBJSL) discovered that the management of the bodycharged with the responsibility to supervise all external examinations in Sierra Leone (WAEC) decided to seize the said amount of results simply because the principal of theschool in question, Mr. Mahmoud Alex owed them a huge amount of cash in the form of school fees. But the million dollar question now is what kind of debt the principal had to pay which motivated WAEC officials to put on such measures that had negatively impacted to the lives and school curriculum of the affected pupils and parents in the middle of the Free Quality Education initiative of the Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) government.
Speaking to the Marampa School Principal, Mr. Mahmoud Alex confirmed to CBJSL via telephone conversation that yesterday, 26th September 2022 some students who sat to the WASSCE exercise under his school clicked on the internet to check for their results, but to no avail.
He explained that he made a follow-up as a government-assisted school with the WAEC administration to find out if the results of the innocent pupils were seized because the Ministry of Basic Education did not or failed to pay school fees for the children.
According to Mr. Alex, they have written letters to stakeholders, including the Minister of Education, Mr. David Moinina Sengeh and his Deputy Minister, Permanent Secretary of MBSSE and other key stakeholders on why they didn’t pay fees for the children attending the said government assisted school, “The Marampa Academy Senior Secondary School is not a private school,” said the disappointed principal of the school under review and he mentioned that as management, they are now waiting to hear from the side of the responsible education ministry in respect of the letter sent to them.
It could be recalled that President Bio’s Government laid more emphasis on improving education in a way that no child should be left behind uneducated, but to the greatest surprise of citizens, this regime had exposed parents to excessive spending on educating their children than ever in the education system in our country.
This situation has been manifested by the general increase in prices of school materials and other basic commodities. In that regard, CBJSL has joined affected pupils and their confused parents at the Marampa Academy Senior Secondary School in Masiaka Town to call on the Ministry of Education, Committee on Education in Parliament, and Civil Society Organizations to investigate the allegations leveled against the official external examination institution in Sierra Leone, WAEC to come out clean.
