By Alfred Kollie Email: alfredkolliejr92@gmail.com
As Liberia’s education system goes through crisis, a local education official has vowed to work in line with the policies of the Ministry of Education (MoE) to enhance quality learning.
Mrs. Lucia Boakai Paygai, the newly commissioned District Education Officer (DEO) of Greater Montserrado District One-E has vowed to make positive difference due to her passion in education.
She was among several other District Education Officers (DEOs) and County Education Officers (CEOs) to be commissioned by the Ministry of Education on Wednesday, August 1, 2018.
Mrs. Paygai, an early childhood education expert, was among several County and District Educator Officers from around Liberia who were recently commissiooned by Education Minister Prof. D. Ansu Sonii in Monrovia.
Speaking to reporters following the commissioning ceremony, Madam Paygai pointed indicated that as a new DEO, she would also recommend some programs to the Ministry that would enhance quality learning, especially at the early level.
She disclosed that some of the programs would be the Individualized Education Program (IEP) that would help hard learning students, and in-service training of teachers every six months for the head start teachers (early childhood teachers).
The IEP will uncover whether the child has a specific Learning Disability (LD) such as short attention span, depending on the age of the child, the education official said.
“With the approval of the Ministry of Education, we can try to educate people on the IEP, which is the individual education plan to help the students. And another thing that I talk about is having counselors at the schools to help the children get over their phobia because most of the children are afraid of certain thing,” Mrs. Paygai said.
“The reason why they are not passing WASSCE and other public exams is because there is a fear within them somewhere. The first time they brought WASSCE a lot of them panic, but if you have a counselor in your school that will explain these thing to them and where they, too, will explain to the counselor where their fear last, then education will be improved. And I am happy that this one is under plan of the Ministry of Education,” said the DEO of Greater Montserrado District One-E,” according to Mrs. Paygai.
She said as a new DEO, she would check all schools under her jurisdiction to know whether each school has a guardian counselor and that in the case of a school that does not have, she would inform the MoE, since this in fact is one of the policies of the Ministry.
Mrs. Paygai holds a Master’s of Art Degree in Christian Counseling from the Newburgh Theological Seminary in the state of Indiana, United States of America (USA),