| BASIC DATA | |
| Official Country Name: | Republic of Liberia |
| Region: | Africa |
| Population: | 3,164,156 |
| Language(s): | English |
| Literacy Rate: | 38.3% |
| Compulsory Schooling: | 10 years |
| Educational Enrollment: | Primary: 147,216 |
| Secondary: 54,623 |
The Republic of Liberia is a democracy located on the west African coast. Bordered by the Atlantic Ocean along its entire diagonal southwest coastline of 579 kilometers, Liberia borders Sierra Leone to the northwest, Guinea to the north, and Côte d'Ivoire to the east. Liberia measures 111,370 square kilometers in area, of which nearly 10 percent is water, and is slightly larger than …
Liberia is a constitutional republic with a strong presidency shaping the direction of Liberian economic, political, and social life. The country's Constitution of 6 January 1986, outlines the basic structures of governance. Liberia's dual system of statutory law features a legal system for the modern sector based on Anglo-American common law and a system of traditional African custo…
In 1995 the adult literacy rate for Liberia was estimated to be only 38.3 percent—53.9 percent for men 15 years of age or older and just 22.4 percent for adult Liberian women. That year Liberia had an estimated 1 million adult illiterates, nearly two-thirds of whom (62 percent) were women. School attendance in Liberia has been considerably lower on average for girls than boys, especially in…
The first 10 grades of schooling in Liberia technically are compulsory, comprising of a preprimary grade followed by nine years of basic education—6 years at the primary level and 3 at the junior secondary level. However, schooling is not free, and parents increasingly have had to hold their children out of school to avoid having to cover their expected educational contribution—schoo…
At the secondary level of education, gross enrollment ratios were reported by UNICEF in 2000 to be 31 percent for boys and a very low 12 percent for girls. This nonetheless marked an improvement over the reported rate 5 years earlier, when the overall secondary education gross enrollment ratio was supposedly only 15 percent. Secondary schools in Liberia are designed to provide education for childr…
An entrance examination provides the means to access higher education in Liberia. In 1995 the gross enrollment rate for higher education in Liberia was only 2.5 percent overall—3.7 percent of males and 1.2 percent of females of higher education age attended tertiary level schools. Nearly 5,000 students were enrolled in tertiary studies in the mid-1990s. Of the Liberian population older than…
Distance education in Liberia has been somewhat impeded by the lack of economic means of most Liberians, the relative lack of computers and Internet service in the country, and the general absence of necessary physical infrastructure, such as electrical supply. Additionally, state censorship of the media acts as a brake on the free transmission of ideas in the country, public discussions, and on t…
At the turn of the millennium, Liberia, in collaboration with UNESCO, was implementing a special UNDP-funded project, the Rehabilitation Support to the Education Sector project, designed to strengthen Liberia's national capacity in planning, supervising, monitoring, and evaluating; to enhance training opportunities for educational personnel; and to produce new curricular materials. US$1.3 m…
Please include a link to this page if you have found this material useful for research or writing a related article. Content on this website is from high-quality, licensed material originally published in print form. You can always be sure you're reading unbiased, factual, and accurate information.
Highlight the text below, right-click, and select “copy”. Paste the link into your website, email, or any other HTML document.
User Comments
12 months ago
I aman instructor at the William V. S. Tubman Teachers College, University of Liberia.