Published: October 19, 2026
MONROVIA — Some teachers trained to lay the foundation for Liberian children’s education are being certified in half the time the Ministry of Education requires. At least two colleges offer nine-month “C” Certificate programs against the ministry’s 18-month pre-service standard.
By Blamo N. Toe
The C Certificate is the minimum qualification for teachers of early childhood classes and grades one through six. The ministry’s Education Sector Plan 2022/23–2026/27 sets the standard pre-service program for new teachers at 18 months.
LICOSESS College of Education runs a nine-month C Certificate program with classes on Saturdays, The Liberian Investigator found. The Liberia Standard Teacher Training College also offers a nine-month C Certificate program.
A shorter program does not by itself mean an institution has broken the rules. The ministry recognizes upgrading pathways for serving teachers with classroom experience, and those can be shorter than pre-service training. The question is whether the ministry is certifying new trainees with little or no classroom experience through programs that fall short of the standard, and whether it knows which programs it has approved.
The ministry’s own planning documents acknowledge that its oversight is thin. The Education Sector Plan lists inadequate monitoring logistics, and the lack of a synchronized system for tracking teacher training, credentials and professional development, among the weaknesses in teacher education. It also names “unsynchronized” C Certificate curricula across training institutions as a problem.
That oversight covers a large field. According to the plan, Liberia has 18 private teacher-training institutes, 17 of which offer C Certificates, along with four universities that train teachers and three public Rural Teacher Training Institutes in Kakata, Webo and Zorzor.
The 18-month standard is relatively recent. A ministry policy document traces how the C Certificate grew from a nine-month course.
“The ‘C’ certificate is the minimum qualification for Grade 1–6 teachers. It was initially re-established as a 9-month-long pre-service course, currently run as a 12-month course. It will be extended to 18 months for 2017/2018 and future cohorts,” the policy states.
The gap has drawn criticism from Elizabeth “Liz” Tiaklan, an educator and alumna of the Study of the U.S. Institutes program. In a commentary titled “The Crisis of Foundational Literacy and Teacher Certification in Liberia: An Exigent Call for Stringent Policy Enforcement,” she said she had personally come across C Certificate programs running for less than 18 months.
“The concern is greater when programmes appear to offer the C Certificate in less time than the national standard. My own experience of encountering such programmes reinforces the need for the authorities to examine their approval, structure and delivery,” she wrote.
Tiaklan said Liberia invests heavily in higher education while neglecting the teachers who give children their first lessons.
“My own experience of encountering such programmes reinforces the need for the authorities to examine their approval, structure and delivery.”
Elizabeth “Liz” Tiaklan, educator
“Yet, we place considerable emphasis on producing professionals at higher levels of education while giving insufficient attention to the preparation of teachers responsible for children’s earliest learning. We expect strong academic performance from learners without giving equal consideration to the quality of instruction they receive at the foundation,” she wrote.
Children who do not learn to read, write and count in the early grades carry those gaps into secondary school and beyond, she said, and money spent on universities cannot repair weaknesses that begin in the first classroom.
She said the length of a program does not alone determine a teacher’s quality. But she argued that institutions must show how their graduates acquire subject knowledge, an understanding of child development and supervised classroom practice, including the skills to teach phonics, reading comprehension and basic numeracy.
Liberia’s 18-month standard is already short by regional measures, Tiaklan said. She said Ghana has moved from a three-year diploma in basic education to a four-year bachelor’s degree, that Nigeria’s Certificate in Education generally takes three years, that the Gambia offers two- and three-year primary teacher pathways, and that Sierra Leone’s programs commonly last three years.
She noted that rules for policing training institutions already exist. “Liberia’s National Teacher Training Management Policy, issued in June 2022, provides for permits, inspection, monitoring, certification and licensure of teacher-training institutions. It also recognizes professional development and qualification-upgrading pathways for serving teachers,” she wrote.
She urged the ministry to draw a clear line between pre-service programs for new teachers and approved in-service programs for serving teachers. She also called for the public to have reliable information on which institutions are accredited, what each program requires and how graduates are assessed.
The pressure on the system is visible in the ministry’s own figures. The Education Sector Plan reports that 45% of lower-basic teachers were trained in 2019/20. Graduates of the three public Rural Teacher Training Institutes fell from 530 in 2013-14 to 276 in 2018-19, and only 16% of the 2018-19 graduates were women.
Tiaklan said early childhood and primary teachers deserve recognition that matches their role.
“Their professional preparation, recognition and opportunities for advancement should reflect the importance of their work,” she wrote.
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