….Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. – Proverbs 22:6

…“If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people.” – Asian Proverb

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance. -Derek Bok, Ann Landers, or Char Meyers

As an educator, I often pay close and particular attention to government policies. It was thus very exciting news that was released by Malawi leader Arthur Peter Mutharika, upon his re-election to the high seat: that his government was going to introduce free secondary school education in Malawi. I was instantly caused to think about other Malawi leaders who made similar impacts to the education system of our country.

These are former first President Dr. H. Kamuzu Banda who introduced free university education to every student. This was complete with a $6.00 stipend. The second was Muluzi who introduced free primary school education, living true to the tradition of “m’mela m’poyamba (sic – growth starts early).

Mutharika’s free secondary school finishes the picture of the attempts to ease the burden of educating the children of Malawi – the future leaders of the country.

All three paths cost money. Lots of money, but they are all worth the struggle.

Kamuzu’s free tertiary education built in three decades, a cadre of highly educated professional people that filled middle and high managerial positions in companies in and outside Malawi. More importantly, the country has had four vice presidents and one president that are former graduates of free university education.

When the era of free university education came to an end, two friends of mine (Margaret Mbilizi, Thandikile Chisala and I formed Magzeentha Promotions to raise money and establish a scholarship fund for university students. The NGO raised over $5,000.00 that went into the Vice Chancellor’s Scholarship Fund.

More importantly, because I was in the media, I used any space I could garner in the papers I worked for, to raise awareness of the need to keep standards of university education at the same levels experienced in the 30 years. Such activism led to companies and NGOs to start making contributions to the University of Malawi. Such social responsibility by local companies allowed them to pay for the education of their future employees.

President Muluzi’s introduction of free primary school education, giving credence to an old proverb, was cheaper than funding university students; however, truckloads of students filled to register for entry.

This created the need for more calls to companies for social responsibility and to contribute; as educationists scrambled to ensure that the quality and standards of education was maintained in a landscape of growing freedoms.

As a media practitioner, calls were made or stories highlighted on the education sector. The story of William Kamkwamba, Malawi’s pride of a young lad who from his humble beginnings created a windmill that produced electricity for his village.

Another landmark concern raised was of a young 9-year old kwasa-kwasa dancer, who despite the enormous money her dancing skills was being raised, had to be stopped due to her age. These caused Malawians to pay attention to the raising of their children.

Enter President Peter Mutharika’s dance on the educational platform. The policy offers great new hope to Malawian youth, many of whom are living in humble circumstances.

According to the World Bank, 58% of Malawians face multidimensional poverty with deprivations in health, education, food security, climate change and others.

The Bank, the cost of schooling is the main reason secondary students dropout of school. (Government of the Republic of Malawi, 2019.

With a population of 20.93 million. 80% of the population works in agriculture, Malawi is considered a low-income country with 76.31% of people living below the international poverty line of $3.00 per day, and 71% living in extreme poverty. A severe drought in 2024 led to poor harvests and higher food prices. Food insecurity has been increasing in the past few years.

In the 2025 school year, approximately 80,876 students passed the Malawi School Certificate of Education (MSCE) exams, with a total of 194,584 students who wrote the exams.

This is a significant number of secondary school graduates that are entering the employment or informal sectors. (Quoted from Fact Sheet 2025 and Ip-ed.org on 11.24.2025).

The country’s formal education has primary, secondary, and tertiary levels. Free secondary education puts a bright shining light in Malawi education tunnel.

This is my second call for Malawians everywhere and companies operating in Malawi to help President Mutharika’s vision of educating all Malawians to secondary level; help him turn the grimy picture of our education system to one of glimmer and hope for all Malawians.

The call is for every economically-abled Malawian lining inside or outside the country to contribute either a one-off annual contribution or a monthly contribution into the Malawi Secondary School Fund. This will help the country attain its picture-perfect education scenery.

Additionally, and also very important, the call is made to Malawi government officials in charge of receiving or handling the contributions to this new venture the country is embarking, to PLEASE tighten your belts, close your pockets and handbags, and definitely wash your gluey hands so that Malawi continues its recovery journey.

Your sterling, excellent, and authentic diligence and corrupt-free manner, will permit Malawi school children to get the education they need and must have so they can play their future roles of leadership, equipped with knowledge and wisdom.

Please donate to educating Malawi’s secondary school students.

Knowledge is less expensive than ignorance.

By Burnett Munthali

The Ministry of Education has oversight responsibility and sets academic standards for all schools in Malawi. This includes primary, secondary, technical schools, teacher training institutes, agricultural colleges, correspondence colleges, business schools, polytechnic institutes, and the university.

The university and Polytechnic Institute are in fact autonomous, but tradition now dictates that they come under the authority of the Ministry of Education. Adult education programs operated by ministries like the Defense, Agriculture, and the Interior are autonomous.

When Banda ruled education was a privilege given to a select few. Large numbers of Malawians were denied basic education. Today, primary education is universal and compulsory.

Students enter school at age six and remain for eight years. Secondary education begins when students reach 14 years of age. It lasts for four years and is divided into two sets of two-year courses.

By 1995, the total enrollment in primary and secondary schools was roughly 100 percent of school aged youth (males 106 percent and females 94 percent). Secondary enrollments still lag with 21 percent of males and 12 percent of females attending for an overall enrollment of 17 percent. Efforts are underway to expand educational opportunities.

Free primary education was introduced in 1994. This led to a dramatic increase in primary school attendance, but it also caused overcrowding in many schools and a decline in the quality of education. Malawi recognizes these problems and is making efforts to fix them. For instance, in 1996, the International Development Association granted Malawi US$22 million to train 20,000 new teachers to handle all the new students who are crowding into the schools.

The African Development Bank also earmarked money for new school construction for primary and secondary schools in Malawi in 1997.

In 1995, Malawi had 3,706 primary schools, which were staffed by 49,138 primary school teachers. There were 2,887,107 primary school pupils of whom 1,528,564 were males and 1,358,543 were females.

Opportunities are limited to attend secondary schools because throughout the Banda era an elitist attitude prevailed, i.e., only the rich, the best, and the brightest were encouraged to attend secondary school.

All other students were pushed into vocational training or forced to farm the land. Although there are few secondary schools, they are of very high quality. The exact number of secondary schools is not available but there were 2,948 secondary school teachers in 1995, teaching 139,386 students. Of these students, 90,003 were male and 49,383 were female.

There were 145 teachers who staffed teacher-training institutes, and they taught 1,471 potential new teachers, of whom 996 were males and 475 were females. Vocational schools were staffed by 79 teachers, who taught 1,054 vocational students. No breakdown by sex was available for vocational students.

Malawi had 6 universities in 1995, which were staffed by 329 professors. They taught 3,872 students of whom 2,917 were male and 955 were female (UNESCO: Statistical Yearbook 1995). Other institutions of higher learning were staffed by 202 teachers and had 1,689 students studying administration and other subjects. Of these 959 were male and 730 were female. As of 1997 Malawi spent 2,111 kwacha on education or 20.4 percent of the budget.

In 2001 the adult illiteracy rate was 58 percent (males 28 percent and females 58 percent), despite compulsory education between the ages of 6 and 14.

Academic years begin in September and end in June. There are 3 primary school teacher-training colleges, each of which enrolls roughly 500 students. Missions also operate other teacher training institutes with about 600 students.

Primary school teachers are trained at the lower secondary level in teacher-training colleges where courses last two years. Selection for entry is by interview.

Primary education begins at age six and consists of two cycles, i.e., Standard 1-5 and Standard 6-8. Many students