Seward Incorporated

I am writing this blog from Seward’s office in Lilongwe, Malawi as part of the development of continuous professional development (CPD) workshops in literacy.  While many of the aspects of international education development may not be new to some of our readers, I thought it would be worth using this opportunity to give a brief overview of the reality of education in Malawi.

• From a recent survey of literacy outcomes in education, it was found that in 70% of standard (grade) 2 students in one sample district could not read a single word in their mother tongue (Chichewa) from a list of commonly used words. In another district, 85% of standard 1 students could not write their own name. In another study, 41% of standard 4 students surveyed could not name a single letter! Another survey showed that 97% of standard 2 students surveyed could not answer a single question correctly on a grade-appropriate reading comprehension test. The challenges for students learning to read in both Chichewa and English are enormous!
• It is estimated that 56% of students drop out before standard 5, and a lot of this has to do with the fact that they can not read or do not know English well enough for instruction. Attrition rates for female students are much higher for many reasons, including sexual harassment or unequal treatment, lack of female toilets, or pressures from parents to work at home rather than study. Not to mention the number of students who are affected by life-threatening diseases such as AIDs/HIV.
• The average size of classes is over 100. In some areas it can be as high as 200. The government recently mandated that classes be no larger than 60 students to one teacher. Because of lack of qualified teachers, many teachers have to do double shifts to meet this number (for the same pay as one shift).
• Malawi is currently undergoing a gas crisis, which has raised the price of fuel to very high levels (about $9/gallon, or even twice that if you have to rely on black market gas) and has made availability extremely low. About 1in 10 gas stations in urban areas have gas at any one moment, and people often wait up to 8 hours or more in line to fuel up. This means supervisors, (who usually have motorcycles) are often unable to travel to outlying schools to provide training and support or even become stranded while traveling.

While these statistics paint a very bleak picture for Malawi, I saw several things that gave me great hope.  We recently observed a training of primary school head teachers (principals) which took place on a Saturday.  The teachers travelled many miles, mostly by bicycle to be at the training, which took place in a unlit zonal teacher development center (a zone has about 80 schools in it).  January is in the middle of the rainy season, so some rode down washed-out dirt roads, or battled strong rains to be there.  Most left at first light to travel the distance needed to be there on time and wouldn’t get home until very late.  But they were there, in their suits and skirts. One woman even came with her baby strapped to her back. They received no extra compensation, and the food allowance they did receive barely covers the cost of lunch given the massive inflation the country is experiencing.

In the meetings they were energetic and enthused.  They were interested in finding answers to the questions that could easily overwhelm them.  Some were experienced teachers, and others had just come from the teaching college, their status as head teacher or deputy head placed on their young backs because they were the most qualified from their schools. They critically interpreted the training materials, questioning the facilitator, and arguing constructively amongst themselves.  There were wonderful conversations about involving the community and gender equity, about training their teachers and meeting the challenges of lack of resources and extremely large classes.

Despite the barriers to their success, these head teachers are committed and optimistic.  They know that education is the only way for Malawi to solve its current problems and meet its future needs, and they are willing to make any sacrifice to meet that challenge head on.  I have come away from this trip inspired and hopeful that there exists within Malawi a great human capacity. I just imagine what would happen in the US if we could put the same level of priority on education and were willing to make that same level of sacrifice to educate our youth.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 18th, 2012 at 3:21 am and is filed under International Education Development, Seward News. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: CPD, Malawi

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