The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology has launched the much awaited national education standards for primary and secondary school education, and service charter in a bid to improve quality service delivery in the country.
The development comes after the same ministry last weekend issued a public notice of banning head teachers and education division managers of admitting and transferring students into public secondary schools without its acknowledgement describing as illegal that only the ministry’s headquarters were mandated to carry such responsibilities.
The launch of the national education standards document tend to promote quality and relevant education in response to the Education Act, 2013 and the National Education Sector Plan (NESP) of 2008-2017, with the aim of creating education opportunities and remove barriers towards all schools’ achievement across the nation irrespective of
their socio-economic context including urban, rural, private and public sectors.
While the service charter is committed to enhance service delivery of customers which will help stakeholders and general public to know the core functions of the ministry and encourage employees to be accountable for their actions.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with The Maravi Post on Wednesday, August 26, 2015 in the capital Lilongwe after the launch, Dr Emmanuel Fabiano assured the general public of quality education service delivery with total commitment in reviving inspection to all public schools across nation.
“It’s the ministry’s desire seeing the country’s youth in primary and secondary schools are better prepared for their lives as citizens, parents and workers than is the case of the current situation to effectively contributing towards social-economic development of this nation.
“Through these two documents serves commissioning education practitioners and stakeholders to use them which will guide schools in self-evaluation, identifying strength and weaknesses with set of targets for improvement.
“Thus, the ministry will roll out inspection on this coming academic calendar in all public primary and secondary schools in order to compliment these two documents. This will be a monitoring mechanism on our teachers how are faring in their teaching practice which used be happening some years ago.
“The ministry is still looking into the modality on how to reward best teachers proved beyond their work in improving education standards either through promotion or sending them for upgrading which we think will motivate many to remain and join the teaching professional”, explains Dr Fabiano.
Among other core measures for national education standards including the teaching process such as a curriculum which is appropriate and relevant, teachers with good professional, subject and curriculum knowledge and well-planned lesson while leadership and management looks at schools’ vision, values, goals, governance, leadership and
self-evaluation and improvement which will also be applied to private primary and secondary schools across the nation.
