SIERRA LEONE'S SILVER : EDUCATION PRECIS

 

Linking Results To Pay. '' Lessons in Poverty '' [December] drew well-deserved attention to efforts of the government in Sierra Leone to increase public spending on primary-school students.

But this fourfold rise in spending over four years is hardly a bet on schools.

Even with the overdue increase, it will take years to overcome a legacy of low spending to improve education in Sierra Leone.

The bulk of your article pins its hopes on a fashionable aid project that will make resources available if certain results are achieved.

That approach assumes that low education quality is not down to lack of funding but, rather, the result of government [agent] moral hazard.

Should The Economist not turn the argument on its head? Should aid projects not make the salary payments of development agency staff [principal]  conditional on the success of the project they designed?

The World Students Society thanks author Manos Antoninis, Director Global Education, Monitoring Report, Paris.