LILONGWE-(MaraviPost)-Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MoEST) has announced that on January 6, 2020, it will re-open the secondary schools which were closed down last term after students held protests and damaged property at the institutions.
While announcing the news, the Minister responsible, Dr William Susuwele Banda, urged parents and guardians to advise and discipline their wards to behave accordingly once they return to school.
Susuwele Banda further asked head teachers and other school authorities to always listen to the reasonable concerns of students and attend to the same speedily to avoid recurrence of violent protests which end up causing serious damages to institutional property.
While Commending the government for the positive move, education expert who is a senoir lecturer at Catholic University of Malawi, Dr Steve Shara, said this is very encouraging especially to the students who will be sitting for their national examinations this year.
“It has consequences to the learners especially to those who are going to sit for the national examinations this year. So, that’s good news on that angle. Its a good idea to re-open; we should have re-opened long time ago. In fact we should really try not to rush to close the schools whenever a slight misunderstanding happens. Let’s try to resolve the issues amicably where we see that the students are not doing due diligence,” Shara said.
Last term, the government through the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology closed down Blantyre, Thyolo, Rumphi, Lunzu, St. Michaels Girls and Magawa Secondary Schools, after students staged violent protests and damaged property worth millions of Kwacha due to alleged mismanagement of the institutions by their authorities.
Until the end of the term, it was only Blantyre Secondary School which was re-opened.
