{{Liberia’s education minister says she finds it hard to believe that not a single candidate passed this year’s university admission exam.}}<\/p>\n
Nearly 25,000 school-leavers failed the test for admission to the University of Liberia, one of two state-run universities.<\/p>\n
The students lacked enthusiasm and did not have a basic grasp of English, a university official told media.<\/p>\n
Liberia is recovering from a brutal civil war that ended a decade ago.<\/p>\n
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a Nobel peace laureate, recently acknowledged that the education system was still in a “in a mess”, and much needed to be done to improve it.<\/p>\n
Many schools lack basic education material and teachers are poorly qualified, reports the BBC’s Jonathan Paye-Layleh reports from the capital, Monrovia.<\/p>\n
However, this is the first time that every single student who wrote the exam for a fee of $25 (\u00a316) has failed, our reporter says.<\/p>\n
It means that the overcrowded university will not have any new first-year students when it reopens next month for the academic year, he adds.<\/p>\n
Students told him the result was unbelievable and their dreams had been shattered, our reporter says.<\/p>\n
Education Minister Etmonia David-Tarpeh told the BBC Focus on Africa programme that she intended to meet university officials to discuss the failure rate.<\/p>\n
“I know there are a lot of weaknesses in the schools but for a whole group of people to take exams and every single one of them to fail, I have my doubts about that,” Ms David-Tarpeh said. “It’s like mass murder.”<\/p>\n
Ms David-Tarpeh said she knew some of the students and the schools they attended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Liberia’s education minister says she finds it hard to believe that not a single candidate passed this year’s university admission exam.}} Nearly 25,000 school-leavers failed the test for admission to the University of Liberia, one of two state-run universities. The students lacked enthusiasm and did not have a basic grasp of English, a university official […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-9999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9999\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9999"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=9999"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=9999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}