Malawi President Peter Mutharika on Tuesday, officially opened Phalombe Teacher Training College (TTC), which is co-funded by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DfID).
DFID provided 3.9bn kwacha (£4.2m) of aid for the TTC. Among others, the college aims to help address Malawi’s qualified teacher needs.
“The opening of this Teacher Training College, should serve as a sign of my Government’s commitment towards improving education in the country, President Mutharika told the gathering at the ceremony at the TCC.
“We all know that education is the foundation of all development in a country,” he said.
He added that his Administration has outlined a number of education projects, such as construction of new primary and secondary schools across the country and three TTCs in Rumphi, Mchinji, and Chikwawa Districts.
“These Government schools and teacher training colleges, should be able to reduce the teacher-learner ratio, which currently stands at about 1:73 to the international recommended standard of 1:60 or even less,” he said.
Commenting on the importance of training teachers in the country, Head of Department for International Development (DfID) in Malawi, Jane Marshall, said the introduction of free primary education in Malawi in 1994, provided children in the country with an opportunity to attain an education. There is therefore critical need for more teachers to teach them.
Marshall pledged DfID’s support to Malawi’s education system; she said DfID understands that education remains a pillar for growth and development in Malawi.
“Evidence shows that a well-trained teacher in the classroom, is the single most important factor in influencing educational learning outcomes,” she said.
She said well educated children, and adults are one of the greatest assets of a country like Malawi, a country trying to boost its economic growth and to lift its people out poverty.
“And for individual children, particularly girls, too often left behind, a good education transforms lives and opportunities. Good teachers, trained, paid appropriately to be in posts across the country, teaching well, and protecting and encouraging the children in their care, are vital,” Marshall emphasized.
“Education has long been a critical part of the UK’s support to Malawi,” she pointed out.
The DfID boss then disclosed that the UK has since 2010, provided over 84 billion kwacha (£91m) in support of the education sector in Malawi, including for teacher education, management and teaching quality, in a system that has increasingly been under pressure from population growth.
?”As part of wider support to education, we are pleased to have co-funded this facility, in a district that has one of the highest pupil-teacher ratios in the country?.
“DFID provided 3.9bn MWK (4.2m GBP) of UK aid for the Phalombe TTC, to help address Malawi’s current and future needs for qualified teachers.
Marshall said DFID co-funded the TTC with the Government of Malawi up to 2014, and had paid contractors directly. She said the Malawi Government continues to take ?responsibility for issues arising for management of the facility such as utilities and maintenance.?
In his remarks, Minister of Education Science and Technology, Dr. Emmanuel Fabiano said, currently, Malawi produces 5,500 teachers per year, and employs most of them in schools across the country.
“While sometimes we may not be able to employ all the graduate teachers at once, our Government is trying all it can to ensure that all the student teachers are employed and by ?August 1? this year, we will have employed the other group, which is still unemployed; so that by the start of the next school term, they should be at their duty stations,” Minister Fabiano said.