Ministry Education has unveiled plans to construct 6 000 primary school classroom blocks between January 2023 and March 2024 to improve the learning environment.

The ministry’s Principal Secretary Chikondano Mussa said the decision follows the government’s failure to start constructing 3 500 primary school classroom blocks in October last year under Malawi Education Reforms Programme (Merep).

She said funds for the construction of 6 000 classroom blocks are available and the government is finalising the procurement process of the supervision consultants.

Said Mussa: “With Merep we are constructing 10 900 classroom blocks, but it is a project for three years. The plan was to construct 3 500 classroom blocks from October last year until June this year.

“But we delayed because of the process of hiring the supervision consultant who will recruit the clerks of work. So we have combined the figure which was supposed to be done last year and this year. It was supposed to be 7 000, but we felt that it would be too much.”

Minister of Education Agnes NyaLonje interacts with learners and teachers in a classroom

Reacting to the matter, educationist Steve Sharra and education rights activist Benedicto Kondowe said if implemented, the project will help to reduce the current classroom pupil ratio.

However, they both noted that the new additional classroom blocks will not make a great impact considering the current classrooms demand.

Sharra and Kondowe’s sentiments come against the background that the 2022 education management information system shows that there are about 4.9 million primary school learners against about 50 000 classrooms, representing  about one classroom to 98 pupil ratio.

Said Sharra: “Currently, Malawi needs about 33 000 additional classrooms if the government would like to achieve the 1:60 [classroom to pupil ratio]. It needs to be pointed out however that the 1:60 goal has been on the policy books since 2008, and we have never achieved it.

“The ideal for our context would be 40 learners per class, but that’s harder to achieve when we are failing to achieve 60 learners per class. If we consider education to be a long term investment, then we should budget for it accordingly and reduce wastage and abuse.”

In a separate interview, Kondowe who is also Civil Society Education Coalition executive director said the government should come clear on the implementation strategy, saying the project is so significant.

The post Govt to construct 6 000 classroom blocks appeared first on The Nation Online.