Minister of Education

Dr. Jallah’s career spans nearly 23 years in secondary and higher education, teaching, research and development, public service, human services, capacity building, curriculum, policy, and program development.

Additionally, she previously served as the Deputy Director General for Training and Manpower Development at the Liberia Institute of Public Administration (LIPA) and Country Coordinator for the Anglophone West African Regional Public Sector Management Training Program.

Furthermore, she was a consultant at the Ministry of Education, to examine the existing Technical Vocational Education Training scheme. In addition, she served as an application reader for the 2024 Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders.

Minister Jallah holds a Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership from Delaware State University, a Master of Arts in Counseling, and dual undergraduate degrees in Sociology and Communication from Rhode Island College.

Dr. Jallah is a 2020 recipient of the American Council on Education-Women’s Network Delaware “Rising Star” award for her commitment and contributions to the field of higher education. She is also a recipient of numerous institutional leadership and service delivery awards.

Minister Jallah, it is an honor and pleasure to have met you and congratulations on your post as the new Minister of Education for the Republic of Liberia.Please share with us your background and your vision for the Ministry of Education.

First, I am truly grateful to have received this esteemed opportunity to serve as Minister of Education, by His Excellency, President Joseph Nyuma Boakai. My profound gratitude to his Excellency for my preferment and the opportunity to serve.  I am a daughter of the Republic of Liberia, born to the union of Mr. and Mrs. Amos B. Jallah, Sr.  I am a woman of faith, a tenacious first child, a mother of two beautiful daughters, a product of grace and a woman who has truly been helped by God. From a humble beginning and as a beneficiary of true parental guidance, I gained a solid educational foundation at St. Micheal’s High School. That foundation propelled me through my education pursuit and culminating to earning a Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership. My work has consistently supported underrepresented, underserved, low-income and first-generation students’ progress through the academic pipeline. As you have indicated, I have over 23 years of experience in education in areas including but not limited to workforce development, research and development, higher education governance, and policy development.

My vision for the Ministry of Education, which is consonance with President Boakai’s vision and the national development plan, is to give every Liberian access to quality education that prepares learners for contemporary and future workforce demands and entrepreneurship skill to propel our national development agenda.    

Understanding that the President of the Republic of Liberia, His Excellency, Joseph N. Boakai, Sr., has established Education as a priority in his ARREST Agenda.  Please describe the progress your administration has made and what you are most proud of.

Without a doubt, the President has placed education as central to economic development. We have made significant progress since the Liberian people gave us the mandate to govern and the president was sworn in January 2024. These range from infrastructural development, quality assurance in education, optimizing resource allocation, implementing teacher registration and certification standards to national school enrolment drive and volunteer teacher profiling, to mention but a few. The strides we have made in reshaping Liberia’s education landscape are the result of bold, decisive reforms aimed at improving the curriculum, enhancing teaching effectiveness, strengthening school leadership, and ensuring inclusivity and quality in education for all. Let me provide a few more details. For example, regarding infrastructure, we completed the construction of 25 Junior Secondary School extensions to Senior Secondary School status. Eighteen Early Childhood Education centers have been constructed, and three model schools’ construction are nearing completion in Bong, Nimba, and Margibi counties with support from the World Bank. With support from the European Union, existing TVET facilities are being renovated all around the country. The Ministry completed a profiling exercise of volunteer teachers in the system with the view of gradually incorporating qualified volunteers on the payroll. To address the issue of Volunteer Teachers (VTs) and ensure that qualified and well-trained paid teachers are in the classroom providing quality teaching and learning outcomes, a nationwide exercise of 2,545 public schools were covered and 6,192 VTs were identified and profiled. Additionally, a Financial Management Capacity Training was developed and training implemented to ensure transparency, accountability, and financial management excellence in all public schools.

With regard to your question about what progress I am most proud of; I am proud of all the achievements. However, the components that speak to systems strengthening such as vetting and recruitment of qualified education officers, developing a National Quality Assessment Framework, and Implementing Teacher Registration and Certification Standards are most significant. This is because without systems you cannot have efficiency and quality.

Honorable Minister, what would you consider are your major priorities as the Minister of Education and over the past 12-months since your appointment, what major projects and initiatives have you developed that will have an impact on the educational system in Liberia. 

My major priorities are premised on the vision and mission of the ministry, which include, among others, providing access to inclusive quality education for everyone, creating opportunities for people to gain competencies that meet the current and future labor markets, and ensure that management and leadership of education systems enhance efficiency. Pursuant to this vision, I have focused on programs and initiatives such as infrastructural development, early grade literacy, school enrollment drive, girls and inclusive education, teachers and administrators upgrading, expansion of TVET programs, monitoring and supervision, educational materials and supplies, and school feeding.

Educating Liberia’s youth is a monumental task and under your leadership, what would you consider are your primary challenges and opportunities. 

It is indeed a monumental task, but I am focused and poised to ensure the vision is realized. The primary challenges bedeviling the education sector and by extension making it difficult to train the Liberian youth include but are not limited to inadequate number of qualified teachers with serious implication for poor student learning outcomes, dilapidated school buildings and educational facilities requiring tremendous renovation, inadequate essential school resources that support learning, high levels of attrition, especially among girls and people with disabilities, and the high level of malnutrition among our learners. My philosophy about challenges, however, is that to every challenge there is a window of opportunity. Therefore, I am dedicated to tackling these challenges head on. That is why I am committed to foundational learning (early grade literacy), which is expected to have a long-term effect on the entire education sector. We will continue to pursue infrastructural upgrading, increase teacher and administrator education and in-service training and all the other priorities I have outlined. The ultimate goal is ensuring our students are provided with instruction and educational opportunities that ensures they are well read, well spoken, technically proficient and globally competent.

Recognizing that not all young people will pursue higher education degrees, with such a youthful population in Liberia and the critical need for a well-trained work force, can you share with us your vision for technical colleges and universities and how you are engaging the private sector in preparing the workforce for tomorrow.

It is absolutely true that not all young people will pursue higher education, and we should not expect that all young people will and should do so. In fact, when you look at the structure of the educational landscape of developed economies, that expectation is built into the education delivery system. One of the critical ways to ensure that the youthful population with which we are blessed get the needed training and be integrated into the workforce is technical and vocational education training (TVET). This is the primary reason why, as I stated earlier, TVET is a major priority. Together with our European Union partners, after a demand-based assessment of TVET trades across the country to ensure that the desired benefits are realized, 10 learning institutions are being expanded in eight counties to offer TVET programs are demand-driven and expected to yield the desired economic benefits. In the medium term, it is my goal to initiate a TVET job mediation service and then in the medium-long-terms build a national TVET employment observatory.   

Notwithstanding the importance of TVET education, it is my goal to make sure that our youth who pursue higher education get value-for-money. This will be achieved through investment in research and innovation in our institutions of higher learning and proper monitoring of learning outcome through a strengthened Higher Education Commission.

Finally, Madame Minister, is there anything else you would like to add at this time?

Education is a partnership endeavor and not only limited to administrators, teachers, learners, and parents; and no number of partnerships are enough. The systems of accountability and transparency we have established are enough to build confidence in our current and would-be partners. I am calling on all Liberians at home and in the diaspora, as well as friends of Liberia to join the Ministry of Education and me as we embark on this journey to change the education landscape of the country for the better. The media, like yourselves, is a major player in this effort and I will call on you to proclaim the bold efforts and to be true partners as when subsequent initiatives are launched. You would agree with me that, for example, our enrolment drive which has a target of ensuring that 250,000 out of school children return to school by 2027 is enormous and requires an all hands-on-deck approach to ensure its realization; and our media partners as well as development partners will play a vital role. 

Also, I will be remise if I do not acknowledge all the hardworking team members at the Ministry of Education who are working tirelessly to make certain the realization of the vision outlined. 

Finally, service to nation is a privilege, and it is a conviction that I hold dear. Last of all, it has been a pleasure having this opportunity to dialogue with iF Magazine.

On behalf of iF Magazine in Houston, Texas, Atlanta, Georgia and Monrovia, Liberia, thank you, Madame Minister.

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