In 1994 Malawi declared free primary education (FPE). As a result of the declaration close to 1.7 million new pupils entered primary school. These pupils were to be taught by 45,000 qualified teachers in the system. At the same time, the government committed itself to providing all necessary learning materials - textbooks, exercise books, writing materials and everything that creates a good learning environment at school. These innovations created major challenges to the smooth running of the education system. There was an acute shortage of qualified teachers to address the huge enrolments and
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In 1994 Malawi declared free primary education (FPE). As a result of the declaration close to 1.7 million new pupils entered primary school. These pupils were to be taught by 45,000 qualified teachers in the system. At the same time, the government committed itself to providing all necessary learning materials - textbooks, exercise books, writing materials and everything that creates a good learning environment at school. These innovations created major challenges to the smooth running of the education system. There was an acute shortage of qualified teachers to address the huge enrolments and an inadequate supply of instructional materials. The traditional government pre-service teacher training was modified into a teacher education program known as the Malawi Integrated Inservice Teacher Education Program (MIITEP). The MIITEP, however, turned out teachers unprepared for their work.
To address the situation, the Malawian government requested the support of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to provide in-service teacher education. Consequently, the Malawi Teacher Training Activity (MTTA) was established on 1 September 2004 and a mobile teacher training troupe (MTTT) was created to address the provision of high-quality, in-service, teacher training. This article presents how the Government of Malawi, with the assistance of USAID, addressed capacity building within the primary education sector. It also examines the impact the capacity-building efforts on the professionalism of teachers.
Edited abstract and excerpts from publication.
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