Achieving universal primary education in Malawi: quantity at the expense of quality?

Malawi committed itself to achieving universal primary education (UPE) after its first democratic election in 1994. The incoming government had a vision of how primary education could tackle chronic poverty. However, lack of sufficient finance has led to failure to honour pledges of free primary education (FPE). Whilst education expenditure has become more pro-poor, the costs of sending children to school are still too great for poor households.

A report from the Universityof Malawi looks at the funding of Malawi’sprimary education system. It forms part of a project coordinated by the Instituteof Development Studies to explorethe relationship between public education spending and education outcomes insub-Saharan Africa.

FPE was launched at a time when Malawiwas ill-prepared. The country's economy was shrinking due to drought andsuspension of aid flows (in protest at human rights abuses of the old government).The new government ambitiously promised to abolish all upfront and hidden feesand other parental contributions. Education officials lacked the means todeliver these promises and were left with hardly any time to plan for influx ofan additional million pupils for the 1994-1995 school year.

Massive enrolment led to unprecedented demand forteachers. An additional 22 000 teachers were recruited, of whom 90% wereuntrained secondary school leavers. Increased education expenditure has beeneaten up by increased salary costs. The fact that 85% of the budget for primaryeducation goes on salaries leaves little for maintenance, furniture or teachingand learning materials.

Construction of new classrooms and schools has laggedbehind enrolments. Urban districts have enjoyed higher levels of publicinvestment in school construction than rural districts. However, constructionhas not kept pace with increasing enrolments resulting in extremely large andcongested schools in urban areas. While central government has providedbuildings in towns, in rural areas construction largely depended on parentalcontributions before FPE, which created imbalances between rural and urbanschools.

The quality of schooling has been severely compromised bythe enrolment increases. FPE has caused:

• all indicators of education quality to worsen – pupil:teacher ratio, pupil:qualifiedteacher ratio, pupil:classroom ratio and pupil:textbook ratio
• gender disparities in enrolment to narrow butthe gender gap in primary completion rate to widen: in the 1990s the rate forgirls dropped from 27 to 19%
• a significant increase in repetition rates –especially for girls and in the first four years of schooling
• an increase in urban and rural disparities: the pupil:qualified teacher ratio has declined in urban areasbut increased significantly in rural Malawi
• a decrease of resources given to secondaryeducation: poor standards have led to a rapid growth of low-quality privatesecondary schools.

FPE has not led to any significant reduction in parentalburdens as families still pay the largest proportion of the total costs ofprimary schooling. Hunger and lack of resources to buy proper clothes andlearning materials are the main factors contributing to high drop-out rates.More than 20% of school-age children are not enrolled in school.

Malawi’sexperience shows that:

• Education policy reforms should not beintroduced without strategising, accurate budgeting, measurable availability ofrequired resources and monitoring systems able to track progress on budgettargets.
• UPE requires an efficient public expendituresystem.
• Heavy dependence on donors contributes touncertainties about the timing and availability of required funds.
• Teachers and schools should be more closelyinvolved in financial planning and monitoring.