By Patricia Kapulula, MANA
World Bank has donated to Ministry of Education, Science and Technology 19 vehicles to support the achievement of the Equity with Quality and Learning at Secondary School (EQUALS) Project objectives.
The Vehicles worth K928 million will be distributed to six education divisions in Malawi and to each of the institutions that train Secondary School teachers such as Chancellor College, Polytechnic, Nalikule College of Education, Domasi College of Education and Mzuzu University.
Minister of Education, Science and Technology Dr William Susuwele-Banda said during the handover of the vehicles to the beneficiary institutions on Friday that the vehicles would facilitate inspection of schools in order to ensure adherence to education standards and monitor implementation of the curriculum.
He said the vehicles would go a long way in alleviating mobility challenges that would otherwise compromise on the effective implementation of the EQUALS Project.
“The divisions will be able to monitor the implementation of the project in the 13 education districts while for the tertiary institutions it will help in monitoring the teachers to the classroom in order to ensure that classroom practices informs the curriculum in the teacher training institutions,” Banda said.
He called upon the beneficiary institutions and departments to put the vehicles into the intended purpose in order to achieve the intended results of improving learning outcomes in CDSSs.
Within the EQUALS Project there is an element of improving CDSSs and as such 100 CDSSs will be improved by constructing laboratories and libraries.
Susuwele-Banda said this would be done so that the kind of science that is being offered at the school should be the same as in conventional secondary schools.
“So we will focus on science and mathematics so that learners who go to CDSS are not challenged in terms of the quality of the science and mathematics that they learn,” he said.
Chancellor College Assistant Registrar, Alfred Banda said the vehicles would go towards scaling up education standards in the country.
“The coming in of the vehicles is going to assist us in making movements around and adding value to what we are already doing in terms of the efforts we are making to improve access to higher education,” he said.
EQUALS Project is the biggest project which will be implemented in 12 years with support to the secondary school sub sector not only in scope but also in amount of resources worth US$900 million (approximately K68 billion) for the first phase which will last six years.
The objective of the EQUALS Project is to strengthen mathematics and sciences instruction in Community Day Secondary Schools (CDSSs) and increase access and equity at secondary school level.
