Projects improves quality of education in more than 2,000 schools

A five-year project encouraging community participation has improved the quality of education in more than 2,000 schools in Malawi, where the system has been battling with an unmanageable number of admission seekers. When former president Bakili Muluzi introduced free primary education in 1994, the number of students shot from 1.6 million to three million, taking the government unawares with insufficient teachers, learning materials and classrooms. The project, Social Mobilisation Campaign for Education Quality (SMCEQ), was launched in 1998 by the government, in collaboration with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and implemented by a Malawian NGO, Creative Centre for Community Mobilisation (CRECCOM). "The project has mobilised communities to construct additional school blocks in 1,964 schools in 15 districts. Essentially our task was to change the communities' attitude towards education - so we got them to construct the blocks in schools in their localities," Zikani Kaunda, head of CRECCOM told IRIN. CRECCOM also trained and empowered school management committee members in more than 2,000 schools in Malawi's 33 districts. A recent survey by the University of Malawi found that the free primary education policy had been hurriedly implemented and lacked proper planning. The Ministry of Education and Human Resources is currently reviewing the primary school sector. According to CRECCOM's findings, based on interviews with community members, there is a lack of training for newly recruited teachers; discontent with some curriculum changes; lack of school infrastructure; and an inadequate number of teachers. CRECCOM evolved out of two USAID-funded projects: the Girls' Attainment in Basic Literacy and Education Social Mobilisation Campaign (GABLE SMC), a two-year project which began in 1994. GABLE SMC was designed to change people's attitudes and behaviour towards girls' primary education. According to CRECCOM, "As a five-year project it was able to get parents, teachers, children, initiation counsellors, religious leaders and others, dialoguing about and taking action to improve girls' attendance, persistence and completion of primary school". Following the success of the girls' education project, CRECCOM initiated a year-long pilot project targeting community participation to improve school infrastructure and quality of education in seven districts, which laid the basis for SMCEQ. Kaunda said SMCEQ, which ended earlier this year, ran out of funds, "but the community has been mobilised". CRECCOM is currently involved in a pilot project studying the effect of HIV/AIDS on Malawian schools.