George: When I looked at school infrastructure, particularly water, sanitation, and hygiene,
I was struck.
We could not rebuild what was.
We needed to do something radically different.
Nat: George Werner, Minister of Education for Liberia.
Thank you for coming into AEI to talk to us today.
George: Thank you, Nat, for the invitation.
Nat: So, early in 2016, you announced a bold plan of reform for Liberian public education,
the Partnership Schools for Liberia.
But for an American audience, I think it's useful to have a little context.
So, could you sort of give us the groundwork?
When you started as the Minister of Education in Liberia in 2015, what was sort of the status
of public education in Liberia?
George: So I got to the Ministry of Education when Ebola was waning, so to speak.
We had gotten help from the United States government to eradicate Ebola.
And after that, I was charged with the responsibility, after schools had been closed for almost a
year, to reopen schools and get the system going again.
So the first thing I did was to assess what the issues were.
So I took a listening tour of the entire country and what I found, what I heard was not so
good.
There was chronic absenteeism and these teachers were on payroll, but many of them not showing
up to teach.
The learning outcomes were not very good, more so for girls than for boys.
The diversity in the teaching faculty was not that good either and the gap was too wide,
24% female, the rest, male.
And when I looked at school infrastructure, particularly, water, sanitation, and hygiene,
I was struck.
We could not rebuild what was.
We needed to do something radically different.
And so, PSL was thought of as a way to partner with proven private providers, to accelerate
the improvement of learning outcomes for Liberian children.
Nat: And so, when you went to look for these providers, you looked inside Liberia and outside
Liberia.
What were you looking for, for the providers to bring to the table?
George: Look, I had taught in several countries.
In Liberia, in Nigeria, in South Africa, in Ghana, in Kenya, and here in the U.S.
And I became powerfully conscious of what existed elsewhere and how my country had fallen
behind.
And so, the first thing I wanted to know was what in the world there was about low cost
education, the focus being on quality.
And so, somebody suggested Bridge International Academies to me.
So I flew to East Africa to see what Bridge was doing there.
I went to Kenya, I went to Uganda.
I saw their schools.
I spoke to parents, I spoke to school administrators, to community heads.
And I visited the classrooms and I saw firsthand that children were actually reading at grade
level in these poor slum areas, as we call them.
And these schools existed side by side to public schools that in many ways, were in
better conditions, but parents were opting for the Bridge schools in comparison to the
public schools.
And what I saw wowed in terms of the quality of learning outcomes for kids.
So when I went back to Liberia, I thought to myself, I needed a hybrid of a partnership.
The best of what proven providers do in the private sector and what government was capable
of doing, be the regulator, provide the policy platform, and let these private providers
manage the schools efficiently.
And so, that's what we decided to do.
Nat: So, what are some of the things that the operators that you've brought on have
been able to do, that you think demonstrate their potential for changing Liberian education?
George: So, there are...we have commissioned an international evaluation through the Innovations
for Poverty Action, IPA, and with the Center for Global Development.
So, we have the baseline now.
The midline is coming out sometime in August this year.
So we're working for that scientific evidence.
What I see as I go around is behavioral change.
I see teachers who are committed.
I see communities that care about their schools.
I see parents who have increased interest in what their children are doing.
I see students that are present and want to learn.
We've added instructional time and so it's an extended day now, and that is being used
well.
We know that this behavioral change is not only in the partnership schools, but is beginning
to affect the non-partnership schools too.
So, this is part of what we have been searching for and we know that when the results come
out, they will prove the point that, in this day and age...I got to give you a context,
420 million young Africans between the ages of 15 and 35.
In Liberia, 60% of our population under 35.
What is a blessing could be a curse if we do not focus on education.
And in Liberia, for the first time, we have a generation of children that doesn't know
war.
And if we don't focus on them as quickly, as efficiently as we can to improve the quality
of teaching and teacher training, and to make sure that incentives are there for everyone
involved, with students, with parents, with teachers, to be able to deliver quality education,
we'll miss a once in a lifetime opportunity for those kids.
Nat: Right.
Now, something that is hard for Western viewers and Americans to understand is the cost structure
that you're working on in Liberia.
In America, we average about $12,000 per pupil per year.
And in Liberia, the government spends $50 per pupil per year.
So that's a 240X difference, which is hard to believe.
So, I wonder, two things about this.
First of all, how on earth do you get quality education for $50 per year, even with a tremendously
different cost of living, but also how do Western providers work at that cost point?
George: So, let me give you a context here.
The education budget for Liberia is, at least last year's was around 41 million, right?
Of that 41 million, 35 million is devoted to salaries.
So, actually, you've got nothing left for all the things that contribute to quality
in the classroom.
So, what we do is pay teachers.
Some of those teachers don't show up, right?
So that is the $50 component.
With the partnership schools through donors, particularly, private foundations and all
of these, we've added $50 to $60 for innovations in the system.
So they get an extra $50 to $60. $50 if you're working near the capital city where you have
road access.
$60 when you lived in the countryside where infrastructure is poorer.
That is nothing still to give us what we want.
Ideally, we should be able to spend pretty close to $150 per child per year to have everything
we need.
The teachers being there, the school quality, in terms of infrastructure, WASH, which is
water, sanitation, and hygiene, in the context of Ebola.
Making sure there are textbooks and the teachers are trained and paid on time where they work.
If you want all these things to happening, you need to operate around $150 per year.
The providers, they're mixed.
We have eight of them.
Some for profit, others not for profit.
I don't know any of them making a profit at this point, operating at $50, which is government
contribution, and another $50, which is philanthropic contribution.
Nat: As with any bold reform agenda, you have people who praise you and you have your detractors.
And this has garnered some controversy.
So, my question to you is, of the concerns that sort of the detractors of the PSL program
bring up, what concerns do you find that you share them and what concerns do they bring
up that you don't find compelling?
George: The education reform is very conservative in the sense that it's stubborn to change.
The language we all speak for education reform is more progressive than the actual reform
itself because you're dealing with human capacity development, and there's a lot at stake as
with health reform.
So, it's understandably so.
I have had a barrage of opposition emails from the teachers unions, more so from the
international community than from within Liberia, driven by people who don't really understand
what we're trying to accomplish.
Here is an opportunity for once to make good on the promise of free education.
The 27,000 kids in this school don't pay a damn thing.
And it is making good on what the law says should be free, compulsory, primary, basic
education.
And that is happening.
Teachers are showing up in these schools and they are being held accountable.
They're trained, they have extended instructional time.
Everything you want the public school system to be at its ideal is happening in these schools.
But the mischaracterization was that, we were privatizing government schools.
No.
This is a partnership between proven private providers and the government to improve learning
outcomes for children, who would otherwise go to classrooms that are empty and just spend
the whole day there, hungry, without any teacher in front of them.
Nat: In the American media, in a number of times, people have compared this to charter
schools in the developing world or charter schools in Liberia.
Now, that's something that Americans understand, but it's not quite right.
Can you just help me understand some of the fundamental differences between the partnership
schools and charters?
George: The money issue.
You know what the charter schools here get.
That's not the issue.
Our teachers in Liberia are government trained and government certified, and they're government
paid.
Our schools are government owned, they're government maintained.
And so you see those differences.
What we've contracted the providers to do is to manage those schools on behalf of government.
And the teachers unions began by first, mischaracterizing, saying that contract that companies like Bridge
would bring teachers from outside of Liberia to flood the system, which wasn't true.
Liberia's got talent.
We use the public system to vet that talent with the providers and place them in the classroom.
So, there are some differences between what we do in Liberia and what is done here.
And we don't do the choice thing and all that.
What I dreamt about and what I hope will happen, and there are many countries looking at Liberia
is, look, we live in an era where we can no longer shy away from the fact that there's
so much demand of public services for education and for health.
And in spaces where...in countries where the governments struggle to provide the physical
space needed to grow the economy to form these services, we can't continue to think as we
used to.
You have to think as if you were outside of the box.
Leverage blended funding to bring to a sector that needs it very urgently.
Nat: In five years, what do you hope to see become of the partnership schools for Liberia?
George: Children in age appropriate grades and reading at grade level.
And teachers are trained, showing up every day, they are paid on time, and their profession
is honored and they consider teaching as an honorable career.
Nat: And you're on your way.
Fantastic.
Well, George, thank you for coming in...
George: Thank you, Nat.
Thank you.
Nat: ...and talking with us.
George: Thank you.
Nat: Appreciate it.
George: Thank you so much.
Nat: Hey everyone, that's the end of our discussion with George Werner, Minister of Education
for Liberia.
Thanks for watching.
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