The Gambia, along with many other African countries, lacks the resources to provide free public education for all of its children. As a result, government schools charge tuition and book fees. Annual fees for a student in grade 9 in Salikenni total about $30 US. For a student in a government high school in the metropolitan area the total is about $180-a-year. For a village family, especially one with many children, these fees are often prohibitive.

The country has come a long way since independence in 1965, when it inherited from the British a small school system for a few elite. Now, according to the United Nations Children's Fund 78 per cent of boys and 77 per cent of girls of primary school age are in school. At the secondary school level, 49 per cent of boys and 41 per cent of girls are enrolled.

The Gambia has set a goal to provide a "basic" education (grades 1-9) for all children by 2015. It already provides free tuition for girls in much of the country. As a result, the Scholarship Fund does not have to pay tuition for girls in the Salikenni school through 9th grade. We do have to pay their way in metropolitan area high schools and in higher education. Each year we bring an equal number of boys and girls into the program in 7th grade, so that both genders will have equal access to our support and tutoring programs.

Tuition is only the first of many obstacles which Gambian students face in trying to get an education.

Attitudes toward education have changed greatly in the village in recent decades. In almost every compound we visit, parents who are illiterate themselves tell us they want to educate all of their children. Often it is the mother who pushes hardest to get a daughter or a son into school. But sometimes old ways persist. A year ago we learned that Mustapha, one of our scholarship students in 7th grade in Salikenni was not attending classes regularly. His father, a frail old man, explained that the boy was the only able-bodied male in the family and was needed for the heavy work. Nevertheless, the father promised to see to it that Mustapha attended school regularly. But later, Mustapha dropped out of school entirely.



The burden of compound chores is often worse for the girls. With their duties of cooking, cleaning, carrying water and laundering, they have little time to study. They are hounded by offers of early marriage, and always in the background is an attitude one hears from time in the village that their education is really not so important because "they can always get married." When she visits the village, Fatou Janneh, the Fund's Gambian manager, always gives a special pep talk to the girls.

At the end of 9th grade, students throughout The Gambia take an examination, conducted by the West African Examination Council (WAEC), based in Ghana, which determines eligibility to go on to high school. The results of these exams have in recent years been dismal, and this has called national attention to problems in the Gambian school system. At the end of the 2006-07 academic year, for example, 78 per cent of Gambian students nationwide scored F on the English language part of the exam; 82 per cent scored F in math.

At the end of 12th grade, students take another WAEC exam which in large part determines whether they can go on to higher education. At the end of 2006-07, 67 per cent of Gambian students got an F in English and 91 per cent completely failed math.

The 9th and 12th grade results have led the Scholarship Fund to focus its tutoring programs on English and math. English is the official language of The Gambia. After the first couple of grades, all classes in Gambian schools are conducted in English. Still, Gambian students, including our own, have great trouble with English grammar, reading comprehension and writing ability.

The Gambian education administration has recognized this and has traced the problem back to the early grades in schools. It has launched a new phonics curriculum to teach English in the early grades. And it plans to test all students in grades 3 and 5 annually to guage the results.

When they leave the village and go to the metropolitan area for high school our students face another set of hurdles. Typically they live with members of their extended families, who have moved to the urban area. These relatives often are poor themselves. And they are besieged with requests to take in one young person after another. As a result, many of our students live in terrible conditions. They share a small room with four or five others, in some cases sleeping on mats on the floor. Often there is no electric light to study by and even if there were light there is too much noise to concentrate.

Often these urban relatives give students whom they house little supervision. And the parents are far away in Salikenni. Village boys and girls coming to the big city area for the first time are subject to pressures from their new peers to forget their education and fall into unwise and dangerous ways.