Malawi News

Government calls for education investments

Government calls for education investments

By Pemphero Malimba:

Education Minister Madalitso Kambauwa Wirima has underscored the need for more investment in research to improve outcomes of the country’s education sector.

Kambauwa Wirima said this on Tuesday during the launch of a three-year research project dubbed ‘Scaling Up Innovative Gender, Inclusion And Safeguarding Approaches’.

Link Community Development will implement the project in collaboration with Centre for Educational Research and Training at the University of Malawi and the Robert Owen for Educational Change in the School of Education at the University of Glasgow.

Global Partnership for Education Knowledge and Innovation Exchange, a joint endeavour with the international Development Research Centre, Canada, will bankroll the project.

“Research helps the government and its partners to align various programmes with what is on the ground,” Kambauwa Wirima said.

She further called for collaborative efforts to improve service delivery in the education sector.

“We need to work together and adopt a holistic approach to create a more equitable, inclusive and effective education system that benefits all learners. By generating knowledge, informing policy and improving practice, we can unlock the full potential of education to drive national development and create a brighter future for all Malawians,” she said.

Link Community Development Country Director Harold Kuombola said they want to address bottlenecks in the provision of Complementary Basic Education (CBE) at the end of the project.

Kuombola observed that, for some time, complementary basic education has been facing challenges due to lack of skills among facilitators, namely form four students who do not undergo formal training in CBE.

“Through this project, facilitators in complementary basic education will receive skills in inclusive education so that learners should receive responsive teaching according to the nature of their learning difficulties. We believe that this will see that each learner in CBE is not left behind,” he said.

CBE focuses on learners who did not have the opportunity to acquire primary school education and intends to retain and complete primary school education.

In CBE, learners undertake standard 1 to 4 classes in a two-year period before getting back to standard 5 of the normal primary school education programme.