COEDEL Calls for an End to PSL Program

–Wants Gov’t terminate outsourcing agreement with BIA

The Consortium of Education Defenders of Liberia (COEDEL) has called for the blocking of the government’s intention to outsource its primary and pre-primary education system to a United States (US)-based for-profit corporate actor, Bridge International Academies (BIA).

The organization’s call was made at the climax of a two-day workshop that brought together media practitioners and Civil Society Organizations (CSO) in Monrovia. Journalists were admonished to do more robust coverage on halting the commercialization and privatization of education, while CSOs were urged to join the campaign for the same cause.

At the two-day event, which took place from the 17th to the 18th of December, the group said following considerable opposition to this unprecedented move by the Government, which conceived the Partnership Schools for Liberia (PSL) program, where eight actors would operate 93 schools in the first year as a pilot project, the Ministry of Education has decided to increase the number of schools to 202 in the project’s second year.

Speaking at the end of the training, the Chairman of COEDEL, Rev. Joseph Kwiwalazu, told participants that COEDEL opposed the move to outsource education and therefore the proposal must be blocked, not just as a matter of principle; but must be opposed because it is based on faulty logic and provides no evidence to support their radical and disruptive experiment with the nation’s school system.