Increasing Girls' access to education in Malawi - DANIDA Study

DANIDA conducted a study in 25 Distant Education Centres (DEC), schools that were initially established as distant education centres to cater for the students who could not be admitted into conventional secondary schools due to large influx of primary school graduates. These have gradually become conventional community schools with up to 70% of secondary school students attending. This study is part of DANIDA's preparatory phase to support the Malawi Government in the education sector. The findings are:

• 70% of students attend DECs with 15% of resources; while 30% attend conventional schools with 80% of resources.
• DECs were supposed to be community managed, but this was not true as students came from communities other than where schools were sited, and most were self-boarding.
• The 25 DECs have never been visited by the Ministry of Education, there was no supervision, teachers were often  failed NISCE students and there was an instance where 40 students, boys and girls were all living in one room.
• The failure rate of these schools is about 99%.
• 44% of secondary school budget from government goes to maintaining boarding schools and there are only four official ones. 5.6% goes to teaching/learning materials and salaries account for 31 % of the resources.

• Biggest problems cited by all girls interviewed were sexual abuse and pregnancies. Main perpetuators were teachers, boy pupils and male members of community in that order. In rural areas, and semi-urban/urban areas, the main perpetuators were male community members followed by teachers and boy pupils. In some rural DECs, up to half of the teachers had sexual relations with students at some point.
• In one rural DEC, at least 20 girls become pregnant each year, but incidences of sexual abuse were not linked to pregnancies by teachers and male students who were interviewed - instead they said girls were only interested in 'love, sex and romance'.
• Girls were often derided when answering questions in class and teachers' attitudes were clearly discriminating towards the girls. Most of the teachers and male students interviewed for the study referred to girls as 'lazy, passive, inferior and dull'.
• Girls were expected without exception to cook, fetch water and clean hostels in self-boarding DECs while in some DECs, mini households were set up between girls and boys with girls providing services like washing boys' uniforms, cooking, providing sexual services like married couples.
• There were no role models for the girls as there were no female teachers.
• About 95 % of girls interviewed complained about the insecurity of the schools, which exposes them to sexual abuse/rapes.

The Positive indicators are: these schools existed everywhere creating opportunities for transformation, and that in view of  such adverse circumstances, young people, including girls were still interested in getting education. Critical issues discussed that could be funded to transform the educational sector as a whole included: funding for different levels of schools; determining income in rural areas to set fees; scholarships which can be maintained without being hijacked for political purposes; education for what (vocational, technical for example) alternative assessment system will take account of the different strengths of girls and boys; community management of schools that will include students (girls/boys); language-while Chichewa is good for history etc, students must be able to communicate in English and grasp concepts in English; comprehensive review of training of teachers; girls only schools/girls only science schools; relevant curricula, sex education; use of youth clubs to inform; conu-nunity counselors; severe punishment for teachers found to be having sexual relations with students by the government; integration of the educational sector within the decentralisation process and the need to examine social systems of planning education and not just assume that these systems are in place as being currently done.The consultations and issues identified will form the basis of the Ministry of Education Plan of Action for 2000-2005 to which DANIDA is prepared to commit US$12m.

Further information concerning this Programme, contact Mike Kiernam of DANIDA, Lilongwe.

Source: UN Update, March 1999, UNDP, Lilongwe, Malawi
 

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