24/04/2026
The Hidden Crisis Has Been Named. We Are Here.
April 24, 2026
This week in the Liberian Observer, Jacob Kermue reported Minister Jarso Maley Jallah's remarks at the National Week of the Young Child — remarks that named what many in Liberian education have long felt but rarely said out loud. A hidden crisis. A learning gap that does not show up in enrollment data. Children in classrooms who are not learning to read what they are copying from the board.
The Minister's candor is not a small thing. In a sector where ministries are usually pressed to celebrate attendance figures and infrastructure counts, standing up at a national event and saying the quiet part loudly takes political nerve. We read her remarks with respect, and we agree with every line of the diagnosis.
The question the op-ed then raised was the right one. Who is suited and situated to help address this?
The Institute of Basic Technology has been in Monrovia for eight years, working in Liberian classrooms, watching the same crisis the Minister has now named. We want to say plainly: we are here. We stand with the Ministry on this agenda, and we have been building for it.
The Foundational Gap the Minister Described
Minister Jallah pointed to a student who could neatly copy text from a blackboard but could not read what she had written. Any teacher who has spent an afternoon in a Liberian primary classroom knows that student. There is one in every row.
What the Ministry is now calling the hidden crisis is what education researchers call learning poverty, and it compounds fast. A child who finishes Grade 3 without fluent reading does not recover in Grade 4. By Grade 6, the mastery gap the Minister mentioned has become a dropout risk. By WAEC year, it is a failed exam and a closed door.
This is the gap Teacher Pehpeh's Early Learners track was built to close. Not with phonics translated from a US kindergarten app. With literacy and numeracy content structured for children whose first language is not standard English, and for the Liberian reality of multi-grade classrooms under one teacher. The goal is simple and matches the Ministry's own: a child who finishes Grade 3 reading what she wrote, not copying what she cannot read.
Where Teacher Pehpeh Meets the Ministry's Own Priorities
The Minister and the op-ed named a series of pressure points. Each one already has a corresponding layer inside Teacher Pehpeh, built from Liberian classroom evidence rather than theory.
Teacher preparedness for diverse learners. The Minister said plainly that a child who learns differently is not a child to be written off. Teacher Pehpeh's lesson planner generates Liberian-curriculum-aligned plans that teachers can adapt for children at different levels in the same room. Student Mode uses Socratic prompting rather than instant answers, which is exactly the approach that supports learners who need to build understanding step by step rather than be handed conclusions.
The home environment. The Minister observed that in many Liberian homes, learning begins without books, without structure, and sometimes without time. Student Mode is designed for exactly that home. It runs on a phone. It does not require a parent to know the material. It asks the child the questions a good tutor would ask, which means the household does not need to provide the tutor.
The offline rural classroom. The Ministry has stated that its national e-learning platform must be accessible offline in rural communities. We believe that condition. Teacher Pehpeh was architected offline-first from day one, because a tool that only works when the signal is up is a tool that fails the teacher on the day she needed it most. The content stores locally and syncs when connectivity returns — whether that connectivity comes from a cell tower, a community Wi-Fi point, or the LEO satellite dishes now arriving on rural school roofs.
Nutrition, equity, and reach. The Ministry's expansion of school feeding and its push to reach 239,000 learners across 1,473 schools are not things any edtech product can substitute for. What a tool like Teacher Pehpeh can do is make sure the learning that happens once a fed child is in her seat is actually aligned with the curriculum she will be assessed on. Nutrition opens the door. Relevant content furnishes the room.
Alignment with EXCEL. The EXCEL Project's three stated priorities — improving teaching quality, strengthening curriculum delivery, and expanding access to learning materials — are the three priorities Teacher Pehpeh was built against. We are not proposing a parallel agenda. We are proposing to serve the one the Ministry has already set.
What We Are Asking the Ministry to Consider
The op-ed closed by observing that recognition of the crisis is a significant step, but not a sufficient one — that the real test is whether policy ambition can translate into measurable improvements in learning outcomes. We agree. And we believe the translation happens at the classroom layer, in the hands of teachers, with tools that were actually designed for the Liberian child.
The Institute of Basic Technology is asking the Ministry of Education for three things.
First, to consider Teacher Pehpeh as part of the national e-learning platform the Ministry has already committed to. An offline-first, Liberian-curriculum-aligned tool built inside the country by Liberians exists. It should not have to be rebuilt from scratch by a vendor abroad.
Second, to include local builders in the procurement conversations that will follow EXCEL. Too often the funding mobilized for African foundational learning ends up commissioning content from consultancies that have never set foot in a Liberian classroom. The Minister has named the problem precisely; the answer should not be outsourced to people who have not seen it.
Third, to run a pilot together. Pick ten schools. Give us a semester. Measure the foundational literacy outcomes the Minister herself identified as the standard. Compare. Decide on evidence.
The Line That Should Stay With All of Us
The Minister closed her remarks with a sentence the op-ed quoted directly, and it is the sentence this response is written to echo. Her warning, paraphrased lightly: if this is not fixed, the country will have been failed.
That is not a warning only governments receive. It is a warning every Liberian institution in this sector receives. The Institute of Basic Technology heard it. We are answering it with the work already in our hands.
The crisis has been named. Teacher Pehpeh is live, deployed, and ready to serve the reform agenda the Ministry is leading.
We are here.
Teacher Pehpeh is live at tp.institutebasictechnology.org.
The Institute of Basic Technology is a nonprofit EdTech organization based in Monrovia, Liberia, serving Liberian teachers, students, and schools for eight years. This article responds to "The Hidden Crisis in Education Sector," by Jacob Kermue, Liberian Observer, April 23, 2026.
Liberia's education system faces a hidden crisis in foundational learning, prompting urgent calls for systemic reforms to address learning poverty, teacher capacity, early childhood education, and digital constraints.
