Liberia Turns to Private Sector for Primary Education
5th April 2016
As is common in much of Africa, the public education system is plagued by graft, poor quality and truancy on the part of both the students and teachers. The democratically-elected government of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a former World Bank official, has decided to try something new—outsourcing primary education to a private, for-profit firm, with student fees paid for by the taxpayer.
The horror.
Still, consider the apoplectic reaction of Kinshore Singh, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on education, who claimed Liberia was flirting with a “gross violation” of its obligation to educate children, and that Liberia’s plan was “devoid of any legal or moral justification.”
Third World statists are not really the go-to-guys for evaluating what ought to be public and what ought to be private. It’s not as if the U.N. has ever succeeded at anything it has tried, other than wasting other people’s money.