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Chapter 3 - Country Profiles

The research was carried out between 1996 and 1998. Two countries, Malawi and Sri Lanka were selected to participate in the study. The principle was to include one country in Africa and another in Asia in order to provide widely varying cultural contexts. Moreover, there are notable differences between the educational systems of these two countries, not least that Sri Lanka offers a reasonably established educational system while in Malawi, there has been considerable effort to ‘renew’ the education system.

Malawi

Malawi is a narrow, landlocked country in Southern Africa, bordered by Mozambique, Zambia and Tanzania. The country is divided into 3 administrative regions - North, Central and Southern - that reflect historical, socio-cultural and political differences. The country gained independence from British colonial rule in 1964, and the first multi-party elections held in 1994 saw an end to the one-party regime of Dr H K Banda.

Moleni (1999) conducted a study in Malawi and found that urbanisation is increasing rapidly, although over 85% of the population is still found in rural areas. The southern region consisting of Mulange, Blantyre and Zomba is the most densely populated (UNIMA/SARDC 1997) The main urban centres in the South are the industrial capital of Blantyre-Limbe and the university town of Zomba. Infrastructure is poor, with few tarmac roads and limited access to public transport. Less than 1% of the rural population has electricity and access to clean water is problematic for both rural communities and urban townships.

The history of education in Malawi is interesting, Grant-Lewis et al (1990) claim that formal schooling was established by Christian missionaries based on their ambition to evangelise. In this respect, education for women was deemed to be unnecessary, since women could not become preachers (Grant-Lewis et al, 1990). The colonial government reinforced this and during much of Banda’s regime, female participation in education remained severely restricted. This is reflected in an adult literacy rate today of less than 42% for women. (DFID 1998)

In 1994, following the democratic elections, the new ruling party, the United Democratic Front (UDF) stressed its commitment to education, regarding it as crucial to their central policy of Poverty Alleviation (MoE 1995). The new government quickly put in place a number of sector-wide educational reforms, most notably, the abolition of tuition fees and uniforms at primary schools. Expansion of secondary schooling rested on a programme to build mixed, day secondary schools and closer partnership with the private sector (Swainson et. al. 1998).

Tizora (1999) (cited in Moleni, 1999) claims that enrolment rose from 2 million to over 3 million following the introduction of free primary education in 1994, with a net primary enrolment of over 85%. Significantly, gender disparities in enrolments narrowed during the 1990’s (Swainson 1998). In 1995/96 girls comprised 49% of new admissions in standard 1, although this percentage reduces as girls get older by the time they reach Standard 8, they make up 39% of the enrolment (MoE 1996). However, high net enrolment rates mask poor internal efficiency due to late entry, high drop-out rates and repetition for both sexes (Swainson et al 1998).

According to Moleni (1989), transition rates to secondary education have increased in recent years, but remain low at 9.3%. Following completion of the Primary School Leaving Certificate (PSLC), students may be selected, on the basis of their PSLC results, to subsidised government or grant-aided secondary schools. Grant-aided schools are generally well established boarding schools run by Church organisations and are often single-sex institutions.

For all intents and purposes, the education system in Malawi has undergone a transition, mainly in terms of quantitative expansion, but there appears to be a number of problems in relation to the improvement of educational quality.

According to Weber and Chibwana (1999), increased enrolment had resulted in higher pupil-teacher ratios - currently 70:1. Although the aim is to reduce this ratio in the long term, in the short term the government has adopted three measures. The first of these is a national teacher training effort aimed at training 20,000 new teachers. Second the conventional two-year residential teacher training programme has been replaced by a three-year programme in which trainees spend three months at the teachers’ college and the rest of the time in school-based, supervised teaching placements. Third, the school day is being altered to accommodate ‘extended shifts’ which allow for more and, presumably, smaller classes.

Large class sizes, resource shortages, and an inadequately trained teaching corps are seem to be associated with low achievement and wide-scale dissatisfaction with schooling (Johnson et al, 1992) and concomitantly low school completion rates. According to Weber and Chibwana (1999), only 23% of any given cohort completes eight years of primary school. Further, because of high repetition rates, it takes an average of 12 years to complete the eight-year primary school cycle (Ministry of Education and Culture, cited in Weber & Chibwana, 1999).

A number of innovative projects have been established to raise the quality of education, but have been mainly on inputs to education. The study reported here is an attempt to develop school and classroom based procedures to raise the quality of learning, teaching and assessment.

Sri Lanka

By contrast to Malawi, Sri Lankan achievements in education are quantitatively impressive. The GNP per capital in Sri Lanka is US$753 (World Bank, 1996), but its social indicators are typical of countries with much higher incomes. According to a country paper produced by DFID (1997), Sri Lanka has a literacy rate of over 90% and the highest basic and secondary education participation in South Asia. Over the past 50 years, the expansion in school enrolment has been remarkable. Participation in grades 1-5 is now close to universal, while the proportion of pupils still at school in year 11 is close to 70%. Girls have participated in this expansion to an even greater extent than boys and gender ratios range between 92 and 95 in grades 1-5. In higher grades, the gender ratio seems to climb steadily so that by year 11, when students sit the 0 level examination, there are as many as 115 girls for every 100 boys.

The increasing public demand for education has resulted in a network of accessible schools spread throughout the island. Pupils have access to a primary school within a radius of 2 km, a junior-secondary school within every 5 km and a senior-secondary school within a radius of 7-8 km (Hart & Yahampath, 1999).

According to the 1997 census, there are 10,120 schools in Sri Lanka comprising of four different types (see table 1). The student population is 124,108 with a total teacher population of 179,589.

1 AB

1C

Type 2

Type 3

Total

515

1,777

3,877

3,951

10,120


Type 1AB

Schools with Science classes

Type 1C

Schools with Arts/Commerce classes

Type 2

Schools up to grade 11

Type 3

Schools up to grade 5


Schools are divided into Sinhala and Tamil medium, with the latter accounting for 3% of the total number of schools (see table 2 below).

Medium

1AB

1C

Type 2

Type 3

Total

Sinhala

828,206

1,097,280

915,716

314,705

3,155,907

Tamil

212,832

262,776

286,833

233,760

96,801


According to DFID (1997), the quality of education, particularly at the primary level appears to be declining. This is thought to be largely due to the recruitment from 1989 to 1995 of about 50,000 mostly untrained teachers. A number of researchers, including Karyawasam (1991), Nanayakkara (1992 and 1994) and Wijesuria (1994) (all cited in DFID, 1997) have carried out studies of primary school quality in Sri Lanka in recent years, and all have reported disturbing trends in levels of both maths and language achievement (DFID, 1997). Karyawasam, for example concludes:

“The actual performance is not up to standard even in the best schools in both mathematics and language in all the districts... The performance of type 1C, 2 and 3 schools is shockingly poor, so as to warrant immediate remedial action (1991: 27) (cited in DFID, 1997).

There have been several innovations over the years to improve education quality (Little, 1991), starting with the introduction of an integrated curriculum in primary schools in 1972. Recently the government established a National Education Commission to study education standards and a Presidential Task Team has been formed to implement its recommendations.


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