Toying with madness: Free public secondary education

Last week in the National Assembly, Rumphi East member of Parliament (MP) Kamlepo Kaluwa, proposed the introduction of free secondary school education in the country. This is on top of the free primary education introduced in 1994 as well as the free tuition and other fees government abolished in public secondary schools. Here we argue that abolishing fees in public secondary schools would further burden the taxpayer besides lowering education standards.  

Let us contextualize Kaluwa’s proposal. I hope the MP, is aware that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration abolished tuition fees in public secondary schools on September 25 2018. Towards the tripartite elections—on January 1, 2019—to be specific—the administration also scrapped the General Purpose Fund and the Textbook Fund which secondary school students had been paying. These developments mean that students in public secondary schools now only pay boarding fees and examination fees besides other project-specific fees.

Kaluwa’s proposal to make secondary school education free must, therefore, have meant removing the only fees that are still payable in public secondary schools, namely, boarding fees. According to the MP, fees in whatever form is a barrier for needy students to attain secondary school education.

But the legislator’s proposal, although populist in nature, lacks merit, first and foremost, because the Constituency Development Fund (CDF), now at K200 million has a bursary component meant to cater for needy students. Kaluwa should, therefore, have justified why he thinks CDF is inadequate for this purpose.

Secondly, and more importantly, abolishing school fees in public secondary schools means someone would still have to pay for it. This someone is no other than the same taxpayer who is already burdened with funding so many subsidies.

The subsidies include the Affordable Input Programme (AIP), free drugs and healthcare service in public health facilities, and free primary education introduced by the Bakili Muluzi administration in 1994, free tuition and other fees that were removed in 2018 and 2019 for political mileage.

Of course, there is merit in free primary school education. This is that it has long been recognised as a primary factor in reducing poverty (Chimombo, 2009:298). Indicators show that education helps advance economic and agricultural productivity for developing countries, along with improving health and reduction in infertility, infant mortality and morbidity rates (Kadzamira and Rose, 2003:501). In 2016, the World Bank recorded that 51.5 percent of Malawi’s population lived in poverty, an increase from the year before (World Bank 2020). Poverty is a response to low productivity in agriculture, and limited opportunities for non-farm activities (ibid.), all problems where education can easily be the solution.

But although the introduction of free primary education increased access to education for children of different socioeconomic backgrounds, the policy faces challenges such as a shortage of trained teachers, classrooms, teaching/learning materials. In turn, these have affected quality of education (MacJessie-Mbewe, Samson, 2002).

There are some big lessons to draw from the introduction of free primary school education. One such lesson is compromised standards of education. It is a fact that education standards in the country are the lowest in the region after introduction of free primary education in 1994. This is because the policy was introduced without the requisite resources. It, therefore, goes without saying that extending the policy to secondary school education without providing answers to the initial problems that are afflicting the free primary education policy would just be compounding the problems at the higher tier of the education cycle in the country.

Some take-home issues: Government already provides so many free services and subsidies to its people. There is a degree to which government can take on people’s challenges. Citizens should feel responsible to facilitate the services that the government provides by doing their part of the bargain.