values that favour boys over girls, early pregnancies, early marriage, poverty, the breakdown of family structures and the lack of proper understanding among families and communities of emerging issues of rights (Pemagbi, 2010). The MEST and its partners have developed and implemented numerous programmes and initiatives such as free schooling for girls at JSS level, the payment of their public examination fees and multiple advocacy strategies to promote the education of the girl child such as the Girls Education Week Celebrations. The Girl-Child Support programme covers the cost of tuition for girls for three terms in JSS1, two terms in JSS2, and one term in JSS3. In addition, to complement this support, in about 25 percent of JSS schools in the most disadvantaged districts, children at JSS level are supported by development partners with additional incentives and a school improvement package aimed at increasing retention, completion and learning outcomes. For girls specifically, a subsidy is provided to cover fees for terms that are not funded by government. 374.8 The latter campaign aims to inspire parents and communities to send their daughters to school and support them to complete school as well as inspire girls to aim for school completion. In addition, the Girl Child Award is an award scheme to publicly recognize and motivate upper primary school girls who do well in their promotional examinations to complete school, to inspire other girls to emulate them and to motivate parents and communities to encourage and support girls. Between 2005/5 and 2009/10, 2,566 awards were made. The latter awards were a success; they motivated the beneficiaries to continue to study hard, gave them a sense of recognition and elevated their self-confidence; inspired improved educational outcomes through the generation of competition; and inspired parents to send girls to school and encourage their regular attendance (Pemagbi, 2010). 374.9 The development and implementation of the Education Sector Plan: A road map to a better future (2007-2015) which focussed on interventions to realize universal basic education and improve the quality and decentralised administration of education. 374.10 Infrastructure development and the provision of Learning and Teaching Materials (LTMs) projects included the SABABU project which, with the support of the World Bank and African Development Bank resulted in the rehabilitation and reconstruction of 101 JSS level schools and the provision of 240,663 sets of core JSS textbooks. 374.11 The quality of education has been addressed through the short-term revision of the JSS curriculum; the training of teachers through initiatives such as distance education programmes by teacher training colleges to enable teachers to acquire the Higher Teacher Certificate, the development of a needs-based teacher training programme and a teaching curriculum in Maths and Science 375. 96  After a decade of development a number of review processes were undertaken which culminated in the next phase of legal, policy and plan development to address the implementation challenges and deficiencies in the systems as it had evolved. Government of the Republic of Sierra Leone Initial Report on the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child 2002-2014