A recent assessment conducted by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in every district of Malawi found that only 65 percent of teachers were in the classroom on the day the surprise assessments were made.
US Embassy Chief of Mission Amy Diaz lamented on the findings adding this is affecting pupil’s retention and their learning outcomes.
According to her what needs to change is the accountability processes as education outcomes all hinge on parents, community involvement and having teachers in the classrooms.
“We went to all these district schools watching the classrooms even when the teachers were not there. Without accountability at the classroom level, without principals requiring teachers to show up every day, without parents holding principals accountable, and more importantly local leaders holding schools accountable, we’re not going to make the changes that we desperately need to improve Malawi’s education success rate.
“We need better management of these resources, we need principals to make sure that teachers come to school every day and it can’t just be the principal; it also has to be parents, parents who need to be asking their children what are you learning today? Do you have a textbook when you’re in school? Can you bring your textbook home?”
Since 2020, the US Government has invested approximately $142 million (K250 billion) which are targeted at all sectors of education in primary, secondary and tertially levels.
Diaz described the investments in education as important because the US realizes that Malawi’s population doubles in the next 20 years which is the way to its economic success and fulfilling its goals of prosperity requires an education for a talented youth to have the opportunities.
Among other areas, the focus has been on improving primary school learners reading skills through the National Reading Programme in 58,000 public primary schools hence partnered with the Ministry of Education to revise English and Chichewa textbooks to the teachers using the most effective approach to teach children to read.
Since 2016, the US has printed and distributed over 29 million English and Chichewa textbooks and teacher guides for every standard one and four learner and teacher and story books which are necessary to get the practice they need to learn to read well.
In 2024 alone, USAID trained nearly 40,000 educators including all standard one and two teachers, head teachers and local education officials about how to teach reading more effectively.
Additionally, the US has distributed almost 12,000 tablets so that every public primary school now has two tablets to access teaching and learning materials
Through the $90 million investment in Secondary Education Expansion for Development (SEED) initiative, community day secondary schools have been built across Malawi and they’re plans to construct more for every student a year and since it began, US has constructed 96 new classrooms and 30 urban schools and completed 72 brand new schools.
By the time the programmes finishes, 89 new girls’ schools would have been built and the Chief of Mission said she is happy with these developments.
However despite all these investments and looking at the data, US is not seeing the success it would expect.
“By that I mean we don’t see students learning levels increasing appreciably. Unfortunately only about 10 percent of our first graders can actually read at the end of first grade and that’s the number we desperately need to change and so today I wanted to talk about things parents community leaders can do to improve educational outcomes
“When we have more students in SEED schools by building secondary schools and by constructing enough classroom space for additional 27000 students, we have a higher rate attendance. But what we would like to change is the success rate of those learners”
She highlighted improved ways of engaging students for improved outcomes as a good sign of a creative and success tools.
US invested about $142 million that has been invested in the Ministry of Education alone in schools Malawi’s literacy rate is around 67 percent while Zimbabwe stands at 95 percent; a feat she attributed to community involvement which the former can learn from latter.
