Malawi

Reports by David Clarke for UNGEI

1. Background

Malawi has developed a National Education Sector Plan (NESP) for the period 2008-2017. As in the case of the Lesotho ESSP it presents priorities by sub-sector e.g. early childhood development, non-formal education, primary education, secondary education, TVET and higher education. The Ministry of Education Science and Technology (MoEST) is currently developing a sector plan based on the NESP for FTI endorsement. A recent draft of this plan had been shared with the donors in the LEG but it was not used in the piloting process or shared with the consultant.

There is no overall situation analysis for the sector within the NESP. The more comprehensive situation analysis contained in the CSR was finalised subsequently in 2009. Within each sub-sector section there is an analysis of the particular challenges to be faced though these are not generally backed by statistical data. There is no section on cross-cutting issues such as gender, HIV or special needs education. The NESP does however identify a number of challenges relating to equity and inclusion:

Lack of integration of special needs in early childhood development (ECD) provision;
Limited integration of special needs in adult literacy and continuing education;
Poor male participation in adult literacy and continuing education;
Poor access for children with special needs in primary education;
Poor retention of girls mainly from standards five to eight;
Negative impact of HIV on primary education;
Inadequate access to secondary education of children with special needs and orphans;
Poor retention of girls due to long distances to school and unfavourable gender environments;
Negative impact of HIV on teachers and students.

The CSR (2009) contains a wealth of data on the education sector. Among the equity related issues that it covers, the following are particularly noteworthy:

i) The Malawian education system has to develop within a heavier demographic context than that of its neighboring countries. If universal primary education is reached before 2018, primary school places for 4.8 million children will be needed in 2018. This represents 45% more primary school places compared to those available in 2008.

ii) The large majority of the population (82%) still lives in rural areas where school supply and demand are weaker. 63% of Malawians live on less than US$2 a day. Considerable disparities in access exist and they increase along with the level of education. A family’s standard of living is the greatest factor in educational discrimination. Access to each level of education suffers as result from gender but even more from location and income disparities. The difference in the primary completion rate is 14% between boys and girls, but 34% between urban and rural students. The disparity is still greater (44%) between the richest 20% of the population and the poorest 20%. University students from the poorest quintile make up only 0.7% of students, while the richest quintile accounts for 91%. In Malawi, the 10% most educated (those who study longest) benefit from 73% of the public resources allocated to the education sector. The conclusion drawn is that the Malawian education system the most elitist system in Africa.

iii) Schooling inequalities are also geographical. The Northern region has better educational coverage than the two others. The primary completion rate is more than 50% in a few districts (Mzimba, Nkhatabay and Rumphi), while it is below 30% in six others (Dedza, Mangochi, Ntcheu, Machinga, Phalombe, and Thyolo).

iv) The HIV epidemic dramatically affects the development of the education sector because of the deaths of both teachers and parents.

v) Access to Standard 1 in primary education is almost universal (4% of children never attend primary school), but the dropout rate is still very high, leading to only a 35% primary completion rate (PCR). The poor retention rate in primary education comes from a lack of demand, in particular among the poorest. Economic difficulties and behaviour such as early marriage, pregnancy, and family responsibilities are cited to explain the fragility of school demand. The lack of supply as evidenced in crowded classrooms, open-air or temporary classrooms, and incomplete schools also has a negative effect on retention.

vii) The internal efficiency coefficient (IEC) at the primary level is particularly low (35%), which implies that 65% of public resources are wasted in paying for repeated grades or schooling for students who dropout before cycle completion. Repetition rates have increased over the 1999–2006 period to reach 20% in primary education, a level that is the highest in the region.

To address these challenges, the CSR makes the following policy recommendations.

Enhance knowledge sharing about the education system’s strengths and weaknesses;
Strengthen capacity to ensure better data production for planning policies, monitoring, and performance;
Increase the budget priority for primary education;
Enroll the last unreached children who never went to school;
Reduce dropouts within the cycle;
Reduce repetition rate;
Improve quality; and
Better manage the allocation of teaching staff and other resources in schools.

Shortcomings in data are acknowledged. Improvements are required in birth registration and in the way the Education Management Information System (EMIS) monitors school drop out and reintegration. Children who are unreached by the education system need to be identified and their special needs assessed and met to ensure that they go to school. Demand for schooling among the poorest will be stimulated by cash transfers, school meals and advocacy programmes. Advocacy against early marriage and in favour of postponing pregnancy is also recommended. School effectiveness would be enhanced by increasing the responsibility of the community in school management. Equal learning conditions for all children would be supported through ensuring that the allocation of teaching staff is well balanced throughout the country and matches the needs of the students. A stable incentive-based system is needed for rural and remote areas. More female teachers should be recruited (currently 26% of all primary teachers) through affirmative action.

It can be readily concluded that issues of equity and inclusion are of fundamental importance to education sector development in Malawi. Moreover, investments aimed at improving the quality of education cannot be decoupled from issues of equity. It should be noted that the CSR is not fully comprehensive in its assessment of equity and inclusion issues. There is for example no analysis of special needs education. There are no statistical data on the causes of school drop-out by region or of the impact of HIV on educational supply and demand. The partial handling of equity issues has implications for the future use of the equity and inclusion tool.

The MoEST has prepared a draft National Education Sector Policy Statement (2009) which consolidates all existing education sector policies in one document for ease of reference. This is a very useful development in that it will facilitate both policy analysis and implementation within the NESP. The current draft of the NESP lacks a section outlining MoEST policies for the sector. The draft document includes national policy on cross-cutting policies covering gender mainstreaming, special needs education, school health, nutrition and HIV and guidance and counseling.

GTZ had funded a consultancy in 2008 to use the FTI Guidelines for Capacity Development in the Education Sector toolkit. A report had been submitted to MoEST highlighting the key findings from the use of the tool. It is to be noted that the GTZ-developed tool was supported by a consultancy in order to be operationalised.

2. The Piloting Process

The piloting process was organized by the LEG lead agency, UNICEF, in partnership with the MoEST. A two-day workshop was held on 21-22 July in Lilongwe to introduce the tool and to enable it to be piloted by key stakeholders.

Participants were drawn mainly from MoEST. The development partners were represented by UNICEF only. One representative from civil society was present. The session was convened by the Director of Planning, MoEST, Dr Augustine Kamlongera.

The first day involved a presentation of thee tool followed by discussion. This was followed by group work using the situation analysis column of the tool (A). The second day focused the planning column of the tool (C) and again utilised group work followed by plenary presentations.

3. Findings

The first group work session featured an attempt to develop a situation analysis of the education sector from an equity and inclusion perspective. An immediate issue was access to data. As has been observed above the CSR while yielding may important insights in to the status of the education sector in Malawi still contains significant data gaps. It was suggested that the University of Malawi Centre for Education and Training should be involved in data gathering and analysis.

Another early issue was that of ownership of the tool. Where should the tool reside: in government, in civil society or with the development partners? It seemed from discussion that the logical home for the tool would be within the Planning Department of MoEST. To locate it there would however require that the tool be appropriately tailored to the Malawi context.

The group work applied the tool to identify several groups of children who would be vulnerable to non-enrolment and drop out. These were:

Poor children especially those living in severe poverty (boys and girls);
Children with special educational needs (especially among the poor). Children with severe disabilities (deaf, blind or with cerebral palsy) were unlikely to be enrolled;
Children living in remote rural areas (boys and girls). Physical barriers such as rivers and mountains had an impact on school participation. Also the weather is a factor since during the rainy season access to school may be curtailed by floods or lack of weatherproof clothing;
Orphans (especially those living in remote areas) and children from broken families. The lack of role models was cited as an important factor in school drop out in such families;
Sexually abused children (largely due to domestic abuse) and sexual harassment and violence in the school;
Children living in areas where there are plantations (tea and tobacco) and vulnerable to involvement in child labour;
Street children;
Girls (especially if poor) arising from cultural practices supporting boy preference. Early marriage and teenage pregnancy were also reasons for drop out of girls;
Children living with or affected by HIV;
Children from families in which parents migrate for employment opportunity elsewhere.

It was noted that targeted strategies were required to address school drop out. This included strategies for gender, HIV education, health and nutrition and disability. The Child Friendly Schools (CFS) guidelines were viewed as important at the school level with regard to improving retention rates. Geographical remoteness was considered to be a significant dimension of educational disadvantage.
In developing planning responses to the problems identified in the situation analysis, one group organized its interventions in terms of strategies to address barriers to educational participation arising out of geographical remoteness. These included the following suggestions:

Provision of grants to communities to enable them to erect standard classrooms in difficult areas;
Support for girls in standards 5-8 including monetary incentives for school attendance;
School feeding;
Construction of teachers’ houses;
Strengthening community participation in school management.

Other groups identified a range of priorities which included:

Review all relevant existing policies and strategies. Disseminate policies to all levels of the education system;
Scaling up school health and nutrition interventions. These would include the school health and feeding programme, HIV education, take home nutrition packages; and improved provision of school water and sanitation. The issue of whether the MoEST HIV Unit was adequate to meet the challenges was raised by participants;
Enhancement of teacher training for equity and inclusion. This would include the deployment of special education needs (SEN) personnel; in-service training (INSET) for SEN teachers; strengthening HIV education training; incentive packages for teachers deployed to rural areas; strengthening guidance and counseling services and enhancing open and distance learning;
Strengthening the EMIS. This would include collection of data and a special focus on equity and inclusion issues; data collection and merging across ministries; improving dissemination of EMIS data to all stakeholders; strengthening monitoring and evaluation in the planning directorate; developing a comprehensive list of indicators and producing timely reports;
Improving physical infrastructure. This would involve enhancing the role of government and communities to make schools safe and welcoming;
Improve the curriculum to make it address equity and inclusion issues. This would include reviewing and revising textbooks, instructional materials and ensuring an adequate supply at school level;
Strengthen child participation at school using existing structures such as students’ clubs, CFS clubs, Edzi Toto clubs and HIV clubs;
Enhance school capacity including strengthening the implementation of CFS;
Target the most educationally disadvantaged districts;
Increase community participation in decision making in school management utilising existing community structures such as the Village Development Committee, the parent-teacher association (PTA) PTA and school management committee (SMC).
Increase the allocation of resources, both financial and human to address equity and inclusion issues;

The pilot evaluation forms were distributed to participants at the end of the workshop. 9 were completed and returned. The questions in the section (A) on the situation analysis were felt to be particularly useful. The section on plan preparation was considered very important as it provides a road map for the types of interventions that would address the issues identified in the situation assessment. The following results were obtained from the questionnaires:

The questionnaire is easy to use and adds value to plan preparation/revision: (100%);
The questions are relevant (100%);
The questionnaire asks the right questions (100%);

Areas where the responses were slightly less positive concerned specific aspects of the tool:

Prioritisation of interventions (1 dissenter out of 9);
Identifying priority groups (1 dissenter);
Helps identify strategies (1 dissenter)
Helps resource allocation (1 dissenter)
Sufficient guidance (2 dissenters);
Guidance on indicators and monitoring (3 dissenters);
Adequacy in handling issues relating to child labour/work (3 dissenters), HIV and child health (2 dissenters) and children with disabilities (2 dissenters);

Specific comments on the tool contents included:

Separate out primary enrolment from school completion;
Suggested rewording of the question on ‘champion of equity’;
‘What strategies are in place to address equity and inclusion?’ A more holistic approach is needed than is present in the tool at present;
There is a need to review existing policies;
Highlight the issue of policy dissemination;
Separate out training for different categories of staff e.g. school administrators, teachers etc;
There is a need for more guidance including on specific interventions for special needs education and children most at risk of dropping out from school;
There is a need for more guidance on costings;
How are equity and inclusion to be monitored?
Additional questions are required for planners on child labour issues; HIV and children and issues that require further research;
Some issues are handled by other ministries;
Include infrastructure development in remote areas; school construction; feeder road maintenance; rural electrification;
Include greater mention of street children;
Customise the tool for Malawi;
The tool can only bring out equity and inclusion issues if the people themselves are conversant with the issues. Otherwise there is a risk of a superficial response;
The tool is a bit bulky and long.
The tool should be forwarded to the Centre for Education Research and Training for research on equity and inclusion issues;
The workshop needs to include representation from all different stakeholders;
Need to learn from other African countries in this area;

Following the workshop, a short presentation was given to local donor representatives including DFID, GTZ and USAID at the UNICEF office within the regular LEG meeting. With the exception of UNICEF, none had participated directly in the Equity and Inclusion tool piloting process. There was interest from some of the donors, however one representative of an organization that has been a key supporter of the FTI expressed his opinion that the piloting process was not a priority ‘for us.’ It was unclear as to who this included, his organization or the donor group in general. Reacting to probing about this position, he said that the benefits to be obtained though participation in the FTI process were outweighed by the effort required. Moreover, the FTI was in the process of being evaluated and might not be around for much longer. There was no dissent from the larger group. This was a revealing position to take. The issue could not credibly have been one of time. The demands of the piloting process had been reduced to the minimum and had involved little more than two days participation of those concerned.

A key issue seems to be one of commitment to the additional workload that participation in the FTI involves among some members of the local donor group. This may which be quite contrary to the positive headquarters position of the organisations involved. Such lack of commitment if consistently applied is probably quite capable of compromising the effectiveness of local FTI processes and undermining the FTI partnership at the front line of activity.