My Turn

Teachers Council shouldn’t end UCE

 I welcome the Teachers Counci l (TCM) o f Malawi registering , licensing and index ing teachers to raise professional standards.

I agree that the council needs to reg u late the University Certificate of Education (UCE) allowing non-education graduates to become certified teachers.

In fact, TCM should review such programmes regularly, as the National Council for Higher Education does for accreditation of degree programmes.

However, abolishing UCE as a way of training secondary teachers would be throwing the proverbial baby out with the bath water.

There are five main problems with secondary teacher education in Malawi.

First, many education students did not choose education in the past, but it was their only option to enter higher education. Many actually left teaching to find work elsewhere!

These days, many choose education to get a degree, not a passion to teach, while most of those who become teachers having obtained another qualification first are frequently more passionate about the job.

In his opinion article  published in The Nation of Januar y 17 2025), Zi liro Mchulu argues that the UCE is unnecessary because many teachers are unemployed.

However ,he ignores the need to reduce pupil-teacher ratio as many teachers shun rural schools.

Secondly , untrained primary school teacher s in the 1990s were never admitted to UCE because they did not qualify. They had to register for Mastep.

Fur the rmore, primary education is radically different from secondary education. Primary teachers generally teach more than two subjects.

Now there is a professional path for primary teachers, from diploma to degree level.

Secondary teachers without an education qualification—those holding a three-year diploma and those with a general degree— qualify for UCE programmes.

However, those with a diploma should pursue a post-diploma UCE programme and teach only in the lower

secondar y school while degree holders should pursue a postgraduate diploma in education, as the degree covers greater content.

Thirdly, education is a lot more than learning content or acquiring knowledge. Knowledge or facts can be picked up from the Internet.

What about the attitudes and skills pupils need to survive in the modern world? What about their ability to discriminate between misinformation, disinformation and the truth?

Learning mor a l values, developing a conscience and practising life-long good habits are the most important skills for pupils.

Bantu languages rightly use the same root for learning and teaching, such that teaching , literally translated, means “causing to l earn”. However , many education courses merely lead students to learn about the content rather than actually learning how to facilitate their pupils’ learning of the content.

Fourthly, many teachers stop learning new things once they qualify for education degrees or UCE. They prefer to teach as they were taught rather than learning new ways.

To keep up with the demands of the 21st century, all teachers need to be life-long learners and avoid at all costs the desire to preserve the status quo in education.

Continuous professional development courses are now required by the TCM

Final ly, because both bachelor of education (BEd) and UCE prog rammes  generally place the teaching pract i ce at the end of the methodolog y and foundations content, the education students do not practise reflecting on their own and their pupils’ learning experiences throughout the programmes and afterwards. The same might apply to some lecturers.

In the 1980s, students pursued a five-year bachelor of education, with teaching practice in the third year, not disrupting the students’ study of the subject content.

It was a major point of contention when the University of Malawi int roduced a four-year education degree, with the teaching practice at the beginning of the fifth year, after completing the ac ademic prog ramme, without the opportunity to reflect on the teaching practise experience.

I suggest all UCE programmes should require student teachers to teach and be supervised over three terms during the year they take the methodology and foundations courses so that they can relate the content to their teaching context.

If the above suggestions are followed, there would be far greater integration of content and methodology

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