Claim: Minister of Basic and Senior Secondary Education (MBSSE) Dr David Moinina Sengeh has alleged that “in the APC Manifesto, their only promise for teachers is to train Physical Education Teachers! No recruitment, reassessment or training.”
Verdict: False. The manifesto made several other promises to teachers, some of which included retraining and reassessment.
- Full Text
Following the All Peoples Congress Manifesto launch on Monday, May 29, many conversations have been ongoing on so many policy issues. The APC is the biggest opposition party in Sierra Leone’s general election on June 24. The party will be running against the ruling Sierra Leone Peoples Party.
On Tuesday, May 30, the Minister of Basic and Senior Secondary Education, Mr Sengeh, alleged in a Facebook post that APC did not state any promise for teachers in its manifesto, except for training more Physical Health Education (PHE) instructors.
Mr Sengeh made these claims on the same day the full version of the APC manifesto was released on social media.
Mr Sengeh doubled down on those claims in a TikTok video, highlighting how much the SLPP government has done for teachers since 2018. Mr Sengeh is one of the most popular cabinet ministers in the current government, with a huge following on social media. He has over 47 thousand followers on one of his Facebook pages, where he specially made the claim. By 11 pm on Tuesday, the post had over 100 reactions on Facebook and over 700 on Tiktok.
Verification
A manifesto is published content containing promises a political party makes to the electorate to convince them to vote for the party.
To verify this claim, DUBAWA looked through the APC manifesto. On page 20 of the document, there is a sub-section labelled “Invest in the Education Workforce.” The section talks in detail about plans for teacher development.
One of the points states that they will “review and update the current teacher education curricula to reflect advancement in teaching and other skills demanded by the job market.”
The manifesto highlights a few more promises on what will be done for teachers should the APC win the general election.
Conclusion
With the evidence above, it is false for the Minister of MBSSE, David Sengeh, to suggest that the APC Manifesto spoke only about training PHE teachers with no further plans for teacher training and assessment.
