Boakai Reaffirms Pledge to Return 250,000 Out-of-School Children by 2029
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President Boakai used a midterm review of the Back to My Classroom campaign to renew Liberia's commitment to enrolling 250,000 out-of-school children by 2029, with 80,000 targeted this year alone.
President Joseph Nyuma Boakai reaffirmed his administration's commitment to identifying, enrolling and supporting out-of-school children at the Presidential Midterm Review of the Back to My Classroom (BTMC) campaign on September 12, restating a goal of returning 250,000 children to school by 2029.
For 2026 alone, the campaign is targeting 80,000 children across seven priority counties, building on an initial rollout that started in Gbarpolu County when BTMC launched in 2024. The program is now expanding into six additional counties as it scales up toward the 2029 target.
"Bringing children back to school is a shared national responsibility," Boakai told the steering committee review, calling for continued engagement from government, communities, families and development partners rather than treating enrollment as solely a Ministry of Education task.
The campaign's design acknowledges that out-of-school children face overlapping barriers - poverty, distance from the nearest school, disability, missing birth documentation and inadequate facilities - that require coordinated, child-centered solutions rather than a single fix. Officials did not give an updated national out-of-school figure at the review, but the reaffirmed 250,000 target underscores the scale of the challenge facing Liberia's education system even as the administration points to gains elsewhere in the sector.