Last Friday Esther and I visited the FCC Early Learning Adventure Center. Located in the east of Freetown, it’s a small building with two large rooms, an office for the head teacher, a bathroom, and a balcony that wraps around the building. We entered a classroom that was divided into two, each half occupied by a set of students diligently reciting their lessons. Artwork decorated the walls and seeds germinated in the science corner. The children looked up curiously as we walked in, momentarily distracted from their lessons. These kids are an unlikely part of the 14% of Sierra Leoneans who have access to early education.
The FCC school was instituted by the mayor’s office to provide free pre-school education to the children of market women. It houses 40 children between the ages of 1 and 5 who spend their days at the school learning, playing, and napping. Their mothers, meanwhile, work at the nearby Congo Water Market. Before the daycare, these children typically spent their days at the market, playing unsupervised while their mothers went about their business. The school offers a much-needed alternative, emphasizing early cognitive development to give these kids a head start in life.
Our summer project involves evaluating the impact of the daycare on the women whose children are enrolled there. Six mothers showed up at the school to share their experiences with us. They each had a unique story to tell, but some common threads bound them together. The women were typically uneducated, single parents, and the sole breadwinners for their families. They worked long hours at tiring jobs, doing their best to provide for their families. Yet their best was barely enough to cover their daily expenses. The daycare was an unexpected opportunity, one that these women were quick to grab. They praised the school emphatically; it represented their hopes for a better life for their children.
I left the interviews conflicted. The students at the school have won the educational lottery in their community. As we took a break from the interviews, they surrounded us with hugs and kisses. They seemed happy, cared for, safe. But I couldn’t help noticing all the small things they were missing. The school has no electricity (although they are trying to set up solar power) or running water. There’s just one mattress for naptime, the older children sleep on towels laid out on the floor. There is no yard for playtime. These children have so little, yet they have much more than their counterparts.
A second nagging thought was, what happens next? Many of these children are set to graduate soon and head to primary school. With private schools too expensive, they have no choice but to enrol in one of the city’s government run municipal schools. The disparity between private and public is stark. The municipal schools leave much to be desired when you think of quality education. With unqualified teachers, lacking infrastructure, and high dropout rates, it’s unsurprising that the mothers we interviewed were wary of sending their children to such schools. They repeatedly requested that the daycare be transformed into a primary school, a request that I understand but also question.
The pre-school, while commendable, is also an example of the limits of donor led development in resource constrained Freetown. With no money to holistically address early childhood education in the city, a donor funded school that caters to one community is the only option. Pumping money into transforming it into a primary school would help that community, yet do little to address the generally dismal state of education in the city. Weak institutions and lack of funds often mean that such donor pet projects remain just that, pet projects that can rarely be sustained or scaled. I am torn about the value of such projects.
As I reflect on the interviews I picture the defeated looks, the stories of struggling to provide food, the blank looks when I asked the women what they do for fun. And I also picture the gratitude for the school, the complete faith in its ability to help their children, the continuous appeals for extending it.
Will this school help transform education in the city? Probably no. But it will help the child who gets to attend it. And her mother skimping every Leone to afford the Le 5 million ($380) in school fees that she needs to send her daughter to private school. And maybe that is a value-add worth pursuing.