Parliament calls for better education

Members of Parliament (MPs) meeting in Malawi's capital, Lilongwe, to discuss the 2006/07 budget have called for the education system to be overhauled, with the abolition of community day secondary schools (CDSSs) as one of the options. MP Ishmael Chafukira told parliament that the mushrooming CDSSs, which evolved from distance education centres, had contributed to the poor quality of education in the country, and alleged that most of these teachers "do not have necessary qualifications to teach in secondary schools". The government did not agree with the suggestion of closing CDSSs and argued that the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training was being pressured by the public to establish more schools. Education minister Anna Kachikho said closing the CDSSs would create problems for thousands of students. Access to secondary school and declining standards of education have become major political and social preoccupations in Malawi. Analysts have blamed the government; President Bingu wa Mutharika's government has blamed the preceding Bikili Muluzi administration, accusing it of corruption. Limbani Nsapato, national coordinator of the Civil Society Coalition Quality Basic Education (CSCBE), commented, "I totally disagree with the proposal to close day secondary schools and I would rather agree with the minister [Kachikho] because we do not have enough conventional secondary schools in Malawi, and by closing these schools it means we are denying many people a chance to have secondary education." Free primary education was introduced in 1994, when government employed over 15,000 unqualified teachers to fill the gap, but according to education experts, the need to train more teachers was overlooked and this has lowered the standard of education. Teachers in most CDSSs hold low qualifications and the infrastructure is poor, there is no equipment and many students are in dilapidated schools with poor sanitation. Nsapato said improved funding was required to train more teachers, buy more school equipment and increase teachers' salaries to "boost their morale". More pupils enrolled in primary schools meant the number of those selected for secondary school also increased, but there were not enough classrooms for them. In the 2006/07 budget, Minister of Finance Goodall Gondwe allocated 15.6 billion kwacha (US$112 million) of the total K137.7 billion (US$1 billion) to education, second only to the K16.8 billion (US$121 million) set aside for health. However, Nsapato felt that "this is very little - in fact, the government should meet the minimum requirement set by [the] SADC [Southern African Development Community] of 26 percent of the total budget. Government allocates less than 13 percent of the total budget, which is not enough". The UNESCO Institute of Statistics (UIS) estimates that 48.6 percent of primary school teachers and 65 percent of secondary school teachers in Malawi are not qualified. In her 2004 report, 'The Tragedy of Education in Africa', Peroshni Govender of the Nepad [New Partnership for Africa's Development] Governance Project at the South African Institute for International Affairs (SAIIA) recommended that governments make teaching more lucrative to attract more of the brightest school-leavers to the profession, enhance teacher training programmes and improve working conditions. A relevant curriculum and efficient school management policies were also suggested. Shenard Mazengera, an advocacy manager for Oxfam, commented, "Improving the standards of education in schools is the only alternative way - abolishing CDSSs will not solve the problem. These are the schools where most poor families [send their children]. By abolishing them it means we are denying them their right to education. Improving the quality of education in Malawi should not be isolated to the issue of the budget."