Sections:
The race to improve the quality of primary education in Malawi
Much progress has been made on improving education in Malawi. Enrolment rates have increased by about 60% since the introduction of free primary school education in 1994. Young people’s literacy has risen from 63% to 71%.
We now need to focus on raising the quality of education at all levels. Why? Because class sizes of over 100 are normal, not enough children finish primary school and there are not enough girls attending secondary and tertiary education.
It is critical for Malawi that the new curriculum, with its emphasis on literacy and improved teaching, contributes significantly to improving Malawi's 46% primary completing rate and 34% end of primary examination pass rate.
Because the fact is, after six months in Standard One, most children can't read or write even one word of Chichewa, the local language of instruction.
So what are we doing about it?
Breaking through
Malawi's
'Break Through to Literacy' (MBTL) Programme is a pilot project which finished
at the end of 2006. It has shown how literacy
levels could be improved in schools across the country.
The pilot was implemented by Malawi's Ministry of Education with DFID funding, and focused on teaching young children to read and write in their mother tongue.
Modelled on successful programmes in Botswana, Zambia and South Africa, MBTL trains teachers to give a good foundation of language skills for Standard One pupils, using groups as well as individual, hands-on work.
A key feature of this approach is using a rota system to give small groups of children more focused attention. While classes remain very large, this approach creates the opportunity for teachers to engage more effectively with children, and to measure what individual children are learning.
Teachers regularly monitor each student’s progress and give extra tuition to the slower learners.
Next steps?
Our aim is to help Malawi's Government to apply lessons learned from MBTL to the reform of primary education. We want to embed the best practices of Back To Literacy into the new education curriculum roll-out that begins in January 2007.
The training of teachers is a crucial part of improving literacy, and MBTL has helped to show how education reform in Malawi can incorporate best practice. Malawi plans to train all teachers nationwide in the new literacy methods over the next few years.
The vision is to educate every learner into a creative, independent individual. It is slowly coming into focus: children who were not reading now are and children who were sitting passively in rows are now engaged in the classroom.
There have been improvements in pass rates in the Primary School Leaving
Certificate but recent studies show that literacy and numeracy in Standard Four is
lower than the average for Sub Saharan Africa.
Our priorities
The new Malawi ten-year education sector plan sets out the strategy necessary to
improve education:
- Ensuring that the right level of domestic resources, both human and financial, are made available for the plan's effective implementation.
- A focus on monitoring real improvements in children's learning.
- An increase in the volume of aid to support Malawi in achieving this.
DFID will spend £7 million on education in the financial year 2006/2007.
"Already, more than 60 children in my class are reading"
Ireen Dokotala is a teacher at Mpalo School in Ntchisi. There are 119 children enrolled in the Standard One class she teaches. She says:
"As a result of the ‘Break Through to Literacy’ programme, the emphasis has moved away from the teacher to each child’s understanding and skills. It’s a new style of teaching. Now we focus our teaching on children in groups of about 15 at one time.
"As the children finish, they help each other, until each one has read their sentence to me. Already more than 60 children in my class are reading. I am very happy! Before Break Through to Literacy, less than 20 of the children could read. This method works because the children are active and it gives them a lot of practice. Before, we just taught all the children together and they would just repeat us without learning anything."
Key facts
- According to national statistics in 2004, 40% of primary pupils in Malawi drop out of school without attaining functional literacy skills. After six months in Standard One, the majority of learners still cannot read or write even one word. This is partly due to many primary school teachers having only rudimentary training, coupled with the average primary class exceeding one hundred students.
- In 19 African countries, the ratio of children completing primary school is
50% or lower, meaning that at least every
second child does not complete primary school. (Source:
How
many children in Africa reach secondary education? UNESCO, 2006) - Over a half (52%) of Malawi’s population of 12 million people live below the
poverty line (IHS 2005).
For more statistics,
read
Malawi factsheet
(123kb)
Last updated: 5 January 2007