Teachers and Malawi’s development goals: Thoughts for World Teachers Day 2022

It’s only Wednesday, but it has been a busy week in Malawi’s education space. On Sunday 2^nd October the Minister of Education, Hon. Agnes NyaLonje and the Executive Secretary of the Malawi National Examinations Board (MANEB), Professor Dorothy Nampota, released the results of the 2022 Primary School Leaving Certificate of Education (PSLCE) examinations. The next day, on Monday 3^rd October the Ministry announced that it would be recruiting 4,125 auxiliary teachers from the Initial Primary Teacher Education (IPTE) Cohort 13, and some from cohort 14. And today, 5^th October, is World Teachers Day. Social media worldwide and in Malawi has been awash with messages of celebratory goodwill for teachers.

The most dominant news in Malawi, however, has been the PSLCE results and the two top performers, a girl and a boy, who both got 448 points out of 500. Mirriam Kachala, 13, is from Chipiloni Primary School in Zomba, and Joseph Magombo, 12, is from Nankhaka Primary School in Lilongwe. Their secondary education will be supported by scholarships from Press Trust Limited. Other well-wishers have also been donating sums of money to support the two students beyond secondary school.

Mirriam Kachala. Photo from Ministry of Education. 

Joseph Magombo. Photo from Ministry of Education

Many were pleasantly surprised to learn that out of the 260,295 students who sat the exam, 216,664 passed, representing 83.24 percent. Many were equally dismayed to learn that only 89,404 students have been selected to public secondary schools, representing 41.62 percent, an improvement of 4 percent over last year’s selection rate of 37 percent. The pass rate for girls (78.33 percent) is ten percent lower than boys (88.21 percent), while the pass rate for special needs students (72.85 percent) is 11 percent lower than the other students.  

This year’s cohort entered Standard One in the 2014-2015 academic year. The 2015 Education Statistics Bulletin indicates that there were 1,061,868 learners in Standard One in that year. 

The math shows that 801,573 learners did not make it to Standard 8, having dropped out, or having been held back to repeat. That represents 75 percent of the cohort. Put differently, three out of four learners who entered Standard One in 2014-2015 did not make it to Standard 8 by the year 2022. These are disturbing numbers, but they are not new. We already know, from the 2018 Population and Housing Census, that amongst our 14-17 year olds, the official secondary school age, three out of four are not in school.

The numbers will improve in the near future, owing to a number of projects in the education sector. The Secondary Education Expansion for Development (SEED) project, funded by USAID, is constructing and expanding 250 secondary schools. Assuming that 250 new secondary schools were constructed today, and each accommodated 600 new students, we would improve secondary school enrolment by 150,000, which would be enough to accommodate all the 127,000 Standard 8 learners who have not been selected to secondary school this year. More secondary schools are being constructed and expanded through other projects also, including the European Union-funded Improving Secondary Education in Malawi (ISEM) II, and the World Bank-funded Equity with Quality Learning at Secondary (EQUALS) project. As I observed in an earlier piece, progress has been an issue, and there have been substantial delays.

The news announced on Monday, about the recruitment of 4,125 auxiliary teachers to go into primary schools, did not receive the same enthusiasm as the release of the PSLCE results. Auxiliary teachers are slowly becoming the norm as the government is unable to recruit full time teachers. This should not be allowed to continue. As of August this year, 17,438 primary school teachers have been trained, from IPTE Cohort 13 which graduated in 2020, to Cohort 16, which sat their final examinations in August 2022. The government is unable to recruit these teachers on a full time basis largely due to a wage bill cap that is part of a policy regimen of conditionalities that come with the Extended Credit Facility that Malawi is negotiating with the International Monetary Fund.

The public only gets snippets of the ongoing negotiations, making it difficult to know exactly why the government needs to observe particular conditionalities. Memories of 2011 and 2012 are still fresh in the minds of many, when then President Bingu wa Mutharika openly disagreed with the IMF on conditionalities. We all know what happened to the Malawi economy, and there have been near reminisces lately.

Today, on World Teachers Day, it is important to think about the role of teachers towards achieving Malawi’s national goals. During the recent United Nations General Assembly summit in New York, world leaders made pledges towards transforming education in their countries and globally. Most pledges made mentioned the central role of teachers. Malawi’s President Dr. Lazarus Chakwera presented a Statement of Malawi’s commitments, which included making education mandatory for every child from early childhood through to secondary education. The Government of Malawi, through the President, also pledged, among others, to ensure 100 percent enrollment rate in primary school, 100 percent primary school completion rate, 100 percent transition rate to secondary school, and 100 percent secondary school completion rate.

It is difficult to imagine how Malawi's commitments to transforming education can be fulfilled without adequate teachers in primary and secondary school. As enrollments improve, as they are expected to, more and more young people will be in school, and more and more teachers will be needed to teach them. There has to be a solution to the impasse caused by the IMF conditionalities, otherwise we should forget about achieving any of the education goals by 2030, or, let alone, 2063.

 

 

Why Malawi’s education sector could be on the cusp of change

On 5^th April, 2022, Minister of Education, Hon. Agnes NyaLonje presented a ministerial statement to Parliament on the status of government projects in the primary and secondary education sub-sectors. The statement paints the grim reality of problems gripping the country’s education system, but it also shows that if we can follow through on current policy plans, strategies, and the national vision, we might be on the cusp of change over the foreseeable future.

It is nothing short of a national scandal, as we have known since the 2018 population and housing census, that 85 percent of 14-17 year-old Malawians are out of school. It is deeply troubling that 62 percent of students who pass the Standard 8 examination have nowhere else to go because our public secondary school capacity accommodates only 38 percent of those who pass. Such is the precarity and fragility of our education and social protection systems that 450,000 primary school learners (8 percent) have dropped out of school since the onset of the covid-19 pandemic. For secondary school students, that number is 37,000 (9 percent).

Before the cyclones between January and March this year, 10 percent of primary school learners were using temporary classrooms, while 25 percent were using open air classrooms. According to the Ministry of Education, the cyclones affected 476 schools in 22 education districts. There is a deficit of 4.4 million desks for both primary and secondary schools. At the primary school level, 75 percent of learners do not have a desk.

There is progress being made, but it is slow. The government has been constructing three teacher training colleges, but four years since construction started, not even one has been completed. Indications are that all three will be completed this year, which will be a great development. The Secondary Education Expansion for Development (SEED) project, which aims to expand or construct 250 secondary schools, started in 2018, and is expected to end in 2023. With one year to go, the project has constructed only 16 new secondary schools, and expanded only 30. Hopefully there will be an extension, owing to the delays this important project has encountered.

There are positive signs on the horizon, however. There are ambitious and forward looking policies and strategies that, if strictly followed and implemented, could lead to tremendous improvements in the system by 2030 and beyond. The MIP-1, the implementation plan for the first 10 years of the Malawi 2063 vision, has made several strategic provisions. By 2025 all primary schools are expected to have an Early Childhood Education program to ensure that every child has access to public pre-school. Currently only 28 percent of our children have access to pre-school, and these are mostly privately owned centres in urban areas. Access to early childhood education will help most children enter primary school well prepared, and succeed.

Currently about 800,000 children enter Standard One every year, and only about 300,000 survive to Standard 8. This explains why 67 percent of Malawians aged 15 and above do not have any school qualification, according to the 2018 population and housing census. There are far more Malawians outside the school system, than those in school, especially those of adolescent and young adult ages. The budget has nothing for them. The MIP-1 provides for community learning centres, which would address this problem.

There are three other really important strategic interventions the government is undertaking. The Ministry of Education is introducing Open, Distance and eLearning across the entire education system. This could unlock access for millions of Malawians who are denied an opportunity for education especially at secondary and tertiary levels. The Ministry is also developing a new science, technology and innovation strategy that, together with the ODeL strategy, could solve major problems of access, quality, research and innovation across the education system.

There is also a National Teacher Policy that aims to transform the teaching profession and make it central to improving the quality of education and enhance human development capabilities. Once launched, the teaching profession may not be the same. At the heart of Malawi 2063 and the MIP-1 are education, knowledges and competencies to deliver on the aspirations both in the short term and in the long term. That is why one of the seven pillars of Malawi 2063 is human capital development, which others prefer to call human capabilities to ward off the exploitative scent of neoliberal thinking. The education system, and teachers in particular, are therefore central to the achievement of the national vision.

So what we really need to do, as a nation, is to make sure we all understand the vision we have set for ourselves. Even more important is to develop a strong implementation mindset to ensure that we follow through on what we have pledged to do. We should put behind us the era of developing brilliant policies and strategies but failing to implement them. The Malawi 2063 and the MIP-1 are brilliant, well thought out documents. But they need to be seen as living documents that can respond to shifting ground. They also require vigilance and determination, especially in the governance and public sector performance areas.

What is most crucial about the new policies and strategies is that they need to aim at growing the economy exponentially, for the country to be able to start financing and implementing the national vision in the mid-term and in the long term. The current education sector investment plan for the period 2020 to 2030 envisages that for 2022, the education sector requires MK1 trillion. The 2022-2023 budget passed in Parliament recently has allocated MK462 billion to the education sector; not even half of what is needed. This is a problem of the national economy and governance systems.

Currently there is about K153 billion ($180 million) from development partners going into the primary education sub-sector, and about K204 billion ($240 million), also from development partners, being spent on the secondary education sub-sector. Development projects in the education sector are still heavily dependent on donor aid, largely due to the size of our economy which is incapable of funding huge infrastructure projects. There is hope that the MIP-1 strategy might help to begin to change things.

The massive corruption and theft that have now become a daily front page routine pose an existential threat to the national vision, but one we can overcome, if we are determined enough.

I dream of a teaching profession that attracts the best and brightest motivated young Malawians

A TV Station interviewing a 2021 Malawian outstanding teacher (Photo credit: © Steve Sharra)

The Lamp Magazine interview by Joseph Kayira, May 2021

JK: The results of the retaken 2020 MSCE examination show that 81,017 candidates out of 138,310 have failed representing 41.42 percent, a pass rate said to be the worst in a decade. What is your take on this?

SS: The poor results of the 2020 MSCE examinations were shocking and disappointing, but they cannot be said to have been unforeseen. It would have taken a miracle for the majority of students to have excelled after schools were closed for six months, and then the exams were cancelled midway through due to massive leakages and cheating. As the elders would have put it, this was “muvi woyang’anira”. It was heartwarming to see some students still going ahead to score six points and others with several distinctions, so all is not lost.

JK: What’s your opinion on some experts who think the Malawi National Examinations Board (MANEB) should take responsibility for this unfortunate situation where these 81,017 candidates find themselves in.

SS: MANEB’s responsibility is to assess students, not to teach them. What these results have done is to hold up a mirror for us to see how our public secondary school system is performing.

JK: Was it not proper for MANEB to consider reducing the passing rate in view of the Covid-19 induced holiday forcing students stay home for some time?

SS: Reducing the passing mark would compromise the quality of education because it would depict a false image of how our public secondary school system is performing. We would end up lulling ourselves into a false sense of satisfaction; sending to universities and into employment people whose educational qualifications would not be congruent with their true level of knowledge and skills. Perhaps MANEB could have asked the Ministry of Education to delay the exams by another month or two, to allow teachers and students a little more time to prepare. But reducing the pass mark would have had undesirable consequences. The solution is to systematically study the conditions in the system, and address them.

 JK: Others think MANEB punished MSCE candidates for the examination leakage hence the poor results.

SS: If that were true, it would be unfortunate. An examining authority cannot set an exam whose purpose is to make students fail. It would entail examining students on content that was beyond their level and scope. That would be not only unethical, it would also be irresponsible. I stand to be corrected, but I hope that is not what happened.

JK: How best can MANEB handle similar situations in future to avoid the 2020 examination saga?

SS: There was a promise to carry out investigations, both internal and external. I am not aware of any reports that have been released in that regard. If the investigations were systematic and meticulous, then MANEB and the Ministry must have identified where things went wrong, and why. It was reassuring to see that the re-run happened without leakages and cheating, so one hopes whatever lessons were learned from the investigations were applied. It will take consistent due diligence to ensure that the 2020 scenario does not repeat itself in future. The integrity of our education system hinges on the conduct and credibility of the national examination process.

JK: Do you think MANEB has all the support it needs from its stakeholders to properly prepare and manage examinations?

SS: In recent years MANEB was able to demonstrate professionalism and credibility, which may be taken to mean that it has been getting the support it needs from key stakeholders. The national examination process has many layers of complexity, and requires the support and collaboration of many players. Achieving success in such a complex undertaking takes all the players sharing the ultimate goal, that of improving our education system and upholding its integrity.

JK: For months teachers, through Teachers Union of Malawi (TUM), have been fighting government [Ministry of Education] asking for risk allowance in view of the Covid-19 pandemic. Were they justified to go on strike for that reason?

SS: There are two ways of looking at this. First, the teachers’ demands for covid-19 risk allowances were made in a political economy context where “allowances” have come to symbolize benefits and entitlements that have in the end created inequalities that are eating at the core of the country’s social fabric. Thus “allowances” operate in a culture where the elite accumulate for themselves benefits, privileges and power, at the expense of everyone else. That self-accumulation has been blatantly evident in the way covid-19 relief funds have been handled. People who were not at risk to the corona virus because of the nature of their work helped themselves to those funds.

The second way of looking at this question it through the prism of risk itself, real or perceived. Teachers were considered to be at some level of risk, and therefore deserving of allowances, but that decision was changed without explanation. Malawian classrooms in the public schools are so overcrowded it is impossible to achieve the social distance needed to keep away the virus. And young people are known to be carriers of corona virus without exhibiting symptoms. Classrooms are enclosed spaces and epidemiologists have pointed out this as a significant factor in the spread of the virus. Teachers and learners spend long hours inside those enclosed spaces. Teachers were not given PPE; instead, they were made to make their own masks at training sessions where even the money meant for their lunch allowances was swindled.

JK: How should the culture of allowances be handled in this country? Were teachers right or wrong to ask for risk allowance?

SS: When testing for corona virus reached boarding secondary schools, the numbers of students who were found positive were alarming. In some schools the infection rate was fifty percent. Teachers especially in boarding schools were justifiably concerned about their safety from the virus. By the way many teachers use their personal funds to make purchases for their learners and for their classrooms. This happens all over the world. Giving them the allowance would have been a reasonable gesture of appreciation for what teachers do, much of which is thankless. And some would use the money to buy PPE.

The injustice in how the allowances were handled was blatant, and it would have been naïve to expect teachers to just watch and keep quite. That is the context in which we should understand the teachers’ demands for risk allowances.

We all await the report and recommendations from the taskforce that the president announced to look into the issue of allowances, procurement and employment contracts, headed by the Vice President. Hopefully that process will bring sanity to the corrosive culture that the allowances syndrome has created.

JK: Wouldn’t you agree with those who are criticizing teachers for not being sensitive enough to go on strike at a time when the learners needed them most and at a time the country was, and still is in a crisis?

SS: In contexts where injustices are rampant, people tend to be strategic in deciding when to make their demands heard. If Malawi were a society where people were treated with dignity and respect, and people’s pleas for recognition were listened to, the teachers’ demands would have been considered insensitive. But we have created a society where the elite feel entitled to all the privileges and accumulate for themselves benefits and perks. The teachers were trying to make their voices heard in such a context. It is unfortunate that this happened when the education system was at its worst moment due to the covid-19 pandemic, but given everything we have seen, one can understand where the teachers are coming from. 

 

Minister of Education, Hon. Agnes NyaLonje, awarding a 2021 outstanding teacher

(Photo credit: © Steve Sharra)

JK: Do you think teachers have better working conditions in this country? How is Malawi ranked when it comes to remuneration of teachers in this region?

SS: When we talk about teachers’ working conditions, we talk about several things. We talk about school and classroom conditions, where teachers spend a lot of their time. The infrastructure alone needs to be appealing, hygienic, and fit for purpose. Teacher-pupil ratios need to be reasonable. Workloads also need to be reasonable so that workers can have a good work-life balance. Education relies on equipment and materials to facilitate teaching and learning. Then there are issues of remuneration and benefits. 

In Malawi teachers’ conditions, as defined, are not conducive. Classes are so large it takes a lot of work to manage them. Much of the infrastructure, especially in rural areas, is below standard. Teaching and learning materials are a big problem. In her report on the 2020 MSCE results, the Minister of Education, Hon. Agnes NyaLonje, stated that students in lower secondary classes are sharing one textbook to five students. In the upper secondary classes, that is Forms 3 and 4, the situation is so bad that up to 25 students are sharing one textbook. What that means is that many students are going the whole school year without touching a school book. That is a sure recipe for the disaster unfolding before our eyes.

There is also the important aspect of professional growth and career path, which is a huge bottleneck in our educational system. Many teachers work hard over many years but are never rewarded through promotions or other modes of recognition. Many times promotions are politicized. Many teachers are frustrated, and morale has been low for a very long time, it has become a chronic problem. There are now efforts to institutionalise a performance management system, a teacher management strategy, and a continuous professional development framework that should make career progression systematic and realistic. Once that system is established, it should restore hope in the profession and make it attractive again. It should also help retain teachers.

In terms of remuneration, teachers’ salaries are calibrated within the civil service salary structure, and teachers start at one level higher. However, salaries are just one part of the remuneration and privileges ecosystem, and in this regard teachers have the lowest benefits when compared to other sectors in the civil service. In comparative terms with the region, Malawian teachers’ salaries appear to be at par with the region, as far as power purchasing parity is concerned. But Malawi’s economy is in the lower ranks in the region, which puts Malawian teachers also in the lower ranks. Considering the role teachers play in the development of a nation, it is important to give teachers’ remuneration and benefits special consideration. We need to make the teaching profession attractive and appealing to young people. 

JK: How dangerous is the standoff between TUM and government to the welfare of teachers in Malawi?

SS: It is very dangerous. Teaching and learning rely on a lot of factors lining up symmetrically and working in sync. Learners learn best when teachers are motivated, respected and encouraged, and when teachers’ personal welfare and professional aspirations are taken care of. Classrooms are sensitive places that require a teacher who is mentally prepared to teach and is focused on helping students learn. The current atmosphere makes it very difficult for teachers to feel motivated and appreciated. The vitriol coming from certain quarters betrays an ugly underbelly of deep-seated resentment and contempt for teachers. That is very unfortunate.

JK: What should TUM do to puts its house in order for it was apparent during the recent standoff that the centre is no longer holding?

SS: TUM has existed over the decades. It started out as a teachers’ association from the time when schools were run by missionaries, to the time of independence. It has represented the voices of teachers very well over the years. That said, TUM does have issues that it needs to sort out. It needs to be responsive to the needs of its membership, and to be open and transparent. It is the membership that defines an organization, and where it derives its power. It is in listening to and representing the membership that TUM’s significance and influence will grow stronger. There are clear ongoing attempts to weaken and destroy TUM, which shows a lack of understanding of why TUM exists. The leadership of TUM needs to be cautious of attempts to politicize what the organization stands for, and to manipulate how it represents its constituency. These need to be resisted at all costs.

JK: Your final word?

SS: The goals we have set for ourselves for the Malawi we want will not be achieved if we sideline teachers and treat them as second class civil servants. It is teachers who will educate young Malawians and impart to them the skills and mindsets that this country needs to prosper. Teachers have an enormous responsibility in delivering the Malawi we all want. The values with which we treat teachers are the same values teachers will treat learners with. We need to be mindful of this always. I dream of a country that treats the teaching profession, in deed and in action, as the most important profession. I dream of a teaching profession that attracts the best and brightest motivated young Malawians because they understand education as the foundation for building a better Malawi.

Note: A version of this interview appeared in the May 2021 issue of The Lamp magazine. 

Shifting to a continuity paradigm: Re-opening Malawi’s schools in times of covid19

The discourse on the status of Malawi's schools in these times of covid19 was becoming too dichotomous. Either keep schools closed, as covid19 cases rise, or re-open schools, as kids have been idle for too long and many school girls are getting pregnant. What we weren’t talking much about was how to provide continuity of education beyond the pandemic. The Ministry of Education and some stakeholders made some effort to put some secondary school content online and provide data-free access to the Ministry’s portal. Some primary school subjects are also being aired on MBC radio.So some learners have continued learning. 

But without a proper research study to find out what percentage of the student population are accessing these materials, and to what extent they are engaging with the content in a meaningful way, it is difficult to assess the success of the online and radio lessons. Given what we know about some of our national indicators, it is doubtful that the two noble initiatives are benefitting many students.

The 2018 population census revealed that only 4 percent of Malawian households had a desktop computer, laptop or tablet. Internet access was at 16 percent, and radio possession was at 52 percent. The only distance education mode that would have a chance of reaching more students would have been books and print materials. There were indications that these were being prepared, but there has been no update as to what progress has been made.

It is one thing to put content online and on radio, but it is another to ensure that learners have meaningful and educative interaction with those materials. That would need the use of teachers. Teachers could have been given special training in how to support learners and help them better understand the online and radio content. In some West African countries teachers were trained in how to wear protective equipment and meet with learners and parents in homes or designated community spaces. The teachers were able to hear from learners about issues they were experiencing, provide psycho-social support, assign and assess school work, and also provide information on covid19. These were techniques learned from past Ebola pandemics.

Here at home, a few NGOs provided some training to teachers and parents in how to support learners, but these were isolated and uncoordinated efforts done is very few locations. The majority of our teachers have not engaged with their learners throughout the past five months. Thus the majority of our school-age children have not had any meaningful learning experiences. It will take a good research study to understand what experiences learners have been through.

Local and international media reports indicate that in some districts child rape has gone up by 150 percent, and teenage pregnancies have tripled. Before covid19, Malawi had the ninth highest adolescent fertility rate in the world, at 132 births per 1,000 girls aged 15-19, according to World Bank statistics. This is not a new problem; covid19 has only worsened it.

Meanwhile, quite a few international private schools operating in Malawi did not even close. They just shifted to online learning. They saw the covid19 trends in other countries and started planning ahead. They informed parents and told them what to expect and how to prepare. They trained teachers and students alike and when it became necessary, they closed campus even before the government ordered schools to close. Students continued learning online and completed their terms or semesters. There are important lessons that Malawian private and public schools can share with each other, as Minister of Education Hon. Agnes NyaLonje observed the other week.

On Wednesday 12^th August the Facebook page of the Ministry of Education posted an announcement stating that the National Planning Taskforce for the Re-opening of Schools, Colleges and Universities had prepared guidelines for re-opening of schools. I have come across, via whatsapp groups, two documents purporting to be guidelines for the reopening of primary and secondary schools, and colleges and universities, respectively. Assuming these documents are authentic and official, they are quite thorough, detailed and comprehensive. They appear to be the product of expert and thoughtful input from educationists and health experts.

The primary and secondary school guidelines even include a matrix of roles and responsibilities of stakeholders, a monitoring and evaluation plan, and a checklist of what schools need to have in place to re-open. In his weekly radio address of Saturday 15^th August President Dr. Lazarus Chakwera’s stated that schools would be inspected and only those schools meeting covid19 prevention requirements would be allowed to re-open. We can only assume that the president was referring to the guidelines that are being shared via whatsapp.

For the remainder of the article, I want to make some observations on the guidelines for re-opening schools so as to provide insights into how to make them implementable. The key point I want to make is that beyond re-opening schools, we need to be thinking about the long term vision for education in the country. This will need to include providing for continuity in times of disruptions, and the importance of lifelong learning as national education policy. Regarding the re-opening guidelines, my focus is on the suggestions for remedial content to be the immediate focus, the absence of a timeframe, the need for infrastructure repair and maintenance, teacher continuous professional development, and inspections.

The guidelines stipulate a number of measures to prepare schools for re-opening. These include allowing back school administrators and teachers first so they can begin the work toward re-opening. Teachers must also be trained in covid19 prevention measures as well as in remedial teaching and psycho-social support for learners in preparation for re-opening. Once schools re-open, teachers should focus on remedial content for catching up, resuming from term two then continuing to term three.

The guidelines do not provide a timeframe for the suggested preparatory activities. That is a problem that needs to be addressed. The president said the re-opening of schools is scheduled for early September. That is less than two weeks from now. The only way this can happen is for the public to be made to understand that early September will be for school administrators and teachers only, so they can get started on the re-opening preparations.

There is a lot that needs to be done between now and the first week of September. Some schools will require some infrastructure maintenance to be done before even school managers and teachers can return. There is covid19 prevention resources that will need to go through public procurement processes before they can make their way to schools. School managers, teachers and methods advisers will need to be trained, most likely using cascade models that require weeks to move from national to division to district to zonal to school levels.

There are inspections that need to be carried out for each and every school before it can be certified read to re-open. There are more than 6,300 public and private primary schools, and more than 1,400 public and private secondary schools in the country. There is need for a timeframe to guide the steps needed to prepare schools for re-opening.

The idea to start with remedial content for purposes of catching up needs rethinking. It is important that the guidelines have included the provision for psycho-social support to learners, and that teachers should be trained in how to provide this also. However without clarification and direction, schools may see the two ideas as a trade-off, and may opt for one while ignoring the other. Examinations drive the entire conduct of our education system, and teachers will be under pressure to catch up on lost time. The psycho-social needs of learners will play second fiddle.

Given what learners will have gone through during the months schools were closed, attending to their psycho-social needs, on an ongoing basis, will be of paramount importance. In addition to the sexual violence some students will have suffered, others will have gone through psychological trauma, domestic violence, and other forms of uncertainty and insecurity. Some will have even seen family members suffer from covid19, and a few will have lost their family members from the pandemic.

Rushing to recover lost time and catch up with the syllabus will not work for these students. As has been noted in countries where schools have re-opened, teachers are having to play many roles for which they were not trained. They will need to be child psychologists, social workers, health workers, among many other roles. Thus preparing teachers to teach in times of covid19 will need to be a meticulous, well thought-through process of continuous teacher professional development.

The guidelines stipulate a maximum of 40 learners per class. They also suggest maximizing school time. In spite of these provisions, there is an underlying, if not paradoxical assumption that learners will need to come to school every day and spend a lot of time in class. This will be ill-advised. The number of learners in a class will depend on the size of the classroom and how many learners it can accommodate given physical distancing of more than one metre. The guidelines say there should be no more than two learners per desk. Most desks used in Malawian classrooms, made in the pre-covid19 era, are meant for two learners already. The space in between is less than one metre.

Open spaces have been mentioned as a possible alternative, but this will depend on weather and temperature, number of students, minimizing distractions, and teachers’ voice projection. Schools can best decide at this level, keeping in mind safety guidelines. We abhor the thought of students learning under a tree, but covid19 has made this an option in many countries, as long as students are safe from a falling tree. Many schools have more than 1,000 learners, and quite a few have more than 10,000 learners. Even limiting class size to 40 will not work for these schools. In some cases the practical thing to do will be to let some classes come to school every other day, or even once a week. Learners will need to be given work to continue doing on the days they are not in school.

When a learner is showing signs that might pertain to a covid19 infection, schools are supposed to have spaces for isolationing. They should call either 54747 or 929 and wait for a covid19 team to arrive. The majority of primary and secondary schools in Malawi are in rural areas; 90 percent for primary schools, and 77 percent for secondary schools. There have been reports that the special phone numbers sometimes do not work, and when they do, the covid19 team is overwhelmed with the current cases, most of which have occurred in urban areas. There will be need to increase the response teams so that teachers and students who contract covid19 can receive prompt attention.

The most important success factor in implementing the re-opening guidelines will be leadership at the school, zonal, district and division leadership level. Schools that will leverage good leadership at these levels will achieve the requirements and will re-open. Schools that fail at these leadership levels will lag behind, and we will be exacerbate socio-economic inequalities that are already rife in this country.

This covid19 moment gives us an opportunity to rethink our education system and imagine its future. The majority of our adolescents are not even part of the school system, as the 2018 census data shows. Only 18 percent of the secondary school age-cohort are actually in school; 82 percent are not. Our tertiary enrollment rate is 0.8 percent, the lowest in the world as Professor Paul Tiyambe Zeleza reminds us from time to time. It is no wonder that the majority of our adult population does not have a school qualification.

Covid19 has come at a serendipitous time when the Ministry of Education is finishing the next National Education Sector and Investment Plan for the 2020-2030 decade. It has also come as we are discussing the long term national development plan, Vision 2063. We can do no better than putting education, and the nation’s unschooled majority, at the centre of that vision. This entails shifting our paradigm towards seeing education as a continuous, lifelong process for everyone.