Govt queried on 34 schools of excellence

Quality education advocates have queried Ministry of Education over delays to start construction of 34 secondary schools of excellence three years after President Lazarus Chakwera’s administration promised to embark on the project.

Delivering his State of Nation Address (Sona) in December 2021, Chakwera said the 34 schools would be constructed in each of the 34 education districts.

At that time, the then Minister of Education Agness NyaLonje said the project would require about K100 billion to be completed.

But three years down the line, there is nothing to show on the ground, a development which has irked players in the sector who feel government is lacking seriousness on the matter.

However, speaking in an interview on the sidelines of monitoring of the Malawi Education Reform Programme at Katoto Primary School in Mzuzu last week, Secretary for Education Mangani Katundu said the project was at the stage of procuring contractors.

He said: “The project is in its infancy. We started with classroom designs, identification of sites for the contractors and then we went into advertising. The contractors applied and procurement process is ongoing.

“We are almost done with this process for the contractors. So, it’s not a financing issue. Government had put aside an amount of money for the initiation of construction of these schools of excellence.”

Katundu’s explanation comes after a 2023/24 education budget analysis by Civil Society Education Coalition (Csec) showed that only K135 million or three percent of the initial K5 billion required had been disbursed towards the project by February this year.

Csec executive director Benedicto Kondwe said delays in rolling out the project were deeply concerning and reflected inefficiencies in the procurement and planning processes. 

“The absence of these schools is significantly affecting the provision of quality education.

“Overcrowded classrooms, inadequate facilities, and insufficient learning resources are persistent issues that these schools could have addressed,” he said.

In a separate interview, Edukans national coordinator Limbani Nsapato said the schools would be critical in providing secondary education that is of high quality given that there are few secondary schools in the country.

“This means that any delay in constructing these secondary schools is a big disservice to the country,” he said.

Based on information from the Ministry of Education, the infrastructure package for the schools of excellence would be of high quality and standards and that most of the structures will be multi-storey buildings.