The Education Hub with Benedicto Kondowe
THE NEED FOR A COMPREHENSIVE COVID RESPONSE IN MALAWI’S EDUCATION SECTOR
It has been evident from the first phase of the reopening of schools that significant number of schools continue to teach under very challenging conditions. The learning institutions have now been compelled to select measures that they can conform to in the absence of readily available resources. This will compromise the full implementation of the measures and in turn, the safety of the learning institutions.
Spot checks done on the first day of the reopening and throughout the past month highlighted critical areas that were ignored and neglected in a number of institutions. The situation becomes even more disheartening when the 2020/21 National budget and the allocations (or lack there-of,) given to the education sector is scrutinized.
As much as it is commendable that this sector indeed received the lion’s share of the national budget, it is however unfortunate to note that there has been no clear provision to its covid-19 response. In the same breadth, unlike in the health sector, the budget does not make any provision for the recruitment of additional teachers to reduce the high teacher: pupil ratios we have across the subsectors of education.
In June this year, Government through the Ministry of Disaster Management Affairs launched the National Covid-19 Preparedness and Response Plan. The plan indicated that the education sector alone needed to raise MK 10 billion with the resources covering short-term expenses (such as preparedness, capacity building and spread control activities) estimated at MK 1.2 billion; medium-term (response activities) at MK 5.3 billion and long-term (early recoveries activities) estimated at MK 3.5 billion.
In addition, an assessment by the Ministry of Education to determine preparedness of schools (before re-opening) regarding Covid-19 pandemic established, among other things, that nearly 600 schools had no potable water points and that most schools also had no or inadequate personal protective equipment (PPE) for teachers, buckets, soap, other water and sanitation hygiene (WASH) materials.
Despite all of these gaps to be met, the school calendar commenced on the 7th of September with only K2.1 billion made available from the Global Partnership on Education (GPE) to support the reopening. As the eduhub noted in its previous publications, the said support under the GPE project is largely for basic education and not the other sectors.
The first phase of reopening was met with quite a number of drawbacks already. Numerous spot checks brought to light the inadequate resources allocated to cater to Standard Eight, Form Four and Final Year learners. Most schools got close to nothing when it came to PPEs and other WASH materials. Moreover, most classes needed to be divided to observe social distancing protocols. This eludes that, there are more streams of classes hence the need for more teachers. The failure to have provision for the recruitment of already available teachers, in the covid-19 context, is counter-productive at best.
These developments are not only disappointing but raise doubt on how schools are expected to cope with the situation when the other classes resume on the 12th of October.
In the first State of Nation Address (SONA), the President announced the Tonse Alliance’s strategic commitment to have schools reopened as quickly and as safely as possible. It is against this background that we, at the eduhub, expected there to be a budgetary allocation to meet the deficit when it came to properly responding to the pandemic in the learning institutions.
There seems to be a glaring laxity and nonchalance from the government in regards to the fight to contain the corona virus. This is a regrettable observation when the government’s commitment on paper is paralleled with the reality on the ground.
The safety of the learners, teachers and support staff in the country is currently in a precarious state. At the moment, schools lack the needed support and resources from duty bearers and stakeholders. Even though there are lower numbers of covid-19 cases being registered on a daily basis, it would be a reckless endeavor to ignore and continue neglecting to support schools during this pandemic on the premise of the current statistics.
The possibility of the country experiencing another wave of high cases of covid-19 is still there. If another spike were to happen, some of the most vulnerable and susceptible people to contract the virus would be our learners and teachers. In turn, they also pose a risk of spreading the virus to an even larger population if the situation is not properly catered to.
As such, government should work with its partners and stakeholders to salvage the current situation ahead of the 2nd reopening of learning institutions. It is important that resources should be mobilised to ensure that the pandemic is kept under control in our schools. With more numbers coming into the schools on 12th October, 2020, measures could by default be suspended due to lack of resources. This would make the learning institutions too risky for everyone. We can avoid this!
