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No more ‘free’ education at Domasi College

Malawi Government has hiked tuition fees for diploma and degree courses at Domasi College of Education (DCE) from K1, 500.00 (US$ 2. 67) per student per annum to K180, 000 (US$ 321) and K220, 000 (US$ 393) per student per annum, respectively.

 

Lilongwe has also announced that no government sponsored students will be selected to DCE from the 2015/16 Academic Year.

domasi
Domasi College alumni

Announcing the developments in a statement released today, Secretary for Education, Science and Technology, Lonely Magreta, said the changes are effective this academic year.

 

“The revision has been necessitated by the need for students to contribute to the cost of their learning which has been heavily subsidised over the years.

 

“However, the Ministry wishes to inform the general public that even the revised fees are still heavily subsidised because the fees are far still less than the real cost of providing teacher training at DCE which averages at K700, 000 per student per year,” Magreta said.

 

According to Magreta, needy students will be eligible to apply for loans and grants under the Higher Education Students’ Loans and Grants Fund which are being administered by the Higher Education students’ Loans and Grants Board.

 

She also disclosed that the Ministry will be reviewing tuition fees annually to relate to the cost of providing teacher training courses at diploma and degree levels.

Last week, the ministry also announced that candidates selected to train as primary school teachers under the Initial Primary Teacher Education (Ipte 11) conventional programme will not be paid any upkeep allowance during their training period.

Instead, it said the students will have to pay K5 000 (US $ 9) tuition fees and K30 000 (US$ 54) boarding fees on the day of registration.

Tuition fees for one academic year is K15,000 (US$ 27) whereas boarding fees is K90.000 (US$ 161).

 

All those selected reported at their respective colleges on Saturday, September 12 2015.

 

Ipte was introduced to support government in improving the quality and relevance of basic education in Malawi.

The program aims at increasing the capacity of teachers to apply new learner-centred, gender sensitive teaching methodologies, and methods of continuous assessment of students’ performance.

 

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