Sierra Leone’s Free Education Dream: Strained, Stretched, and Still Standing

By Brima Sannoh (ATJLF/MRCG Fellow 2025)

In the dusty classrooms of rural Pujehun District, pupils cram into overcrowded rooms, some sitting on bare floors, others sharing broken benches, listening as their teachers, many unpaid, try to deliver lessons under fading chalkboards and leaking roofs. This is the face of Sierra Leone’s flagship Free Quality School Education (FQSE) programme, an ambitious national effort to lift barriers to education, now strained under the weight of growing enrolment, limited infrastructure, and a deepening crisis of teacher motivation. “I have over 540 pupils and only three classroom blocks,” says Joseph Saffa, head teacher of the National Islamic Mission School in Sahn Malen. “There’s no water, no proper toilets, not enough benches, and only five of our twelve teachers are on the government payroll.”