I recently spent a few days in a remote trading center close to the Zambian border visiting a friend from the Peace Corps. Going into villages, especially villages where I have friends, is one way I stay grounded in the realities that The Advancement of Girls' Education (AGE) scholars face when they return home during school breaks. It is difficult to describe the amount of determination and luck required for most girls from rural backgrounds to complete secondary school, and these trips reinforce what they deal with/live in and how unique they are.
While teaching at a rural secondary school over two years, I saw how the 60 or so girl scholars dwindled to 15-20 by Form 3 (junior year) and Form 4 (senior year) classes. Girls go through childhood and primary school inundated with the idea that women have only domestic value—attending to house and garden and childcare. While the belief that women are in fact capable of other pursuits if they choose is growing, it hasn’t yet translated to a groundswell of support for girls’ education. Role models who have challenged the traditional conception of women are few and far between in most rural communities.
Some images of village life and activities
Girls are frequently given a disproportionate share of household chores, leaving them with less time to study than boys in their classes. Unsurprisingly, girls often fall behind because they lack the academic support from teachers and family necessary for success. Of all primary students taking exams to determine where they can continue their educations, the estimates I’ve seen say that 25% to 35% are selected to secondary schools. Assuming girls buck the trend and make it into secondary school, they will probably learn at a sub-par Community Day Secondary School, where I taught previously.
A Community Day Secondary School is a rural secondary school that receives a significant amount of support from the surrounding community. I’ve taught in one for two years, I’ve known volunteers who’ve taught at probably 50 others, and I’ve visited maybe another 20 or 30 since I’ve been in Malawi. Frankly none of them have been equipped to offer anything approaching adequate education. Class sizes can climb as high as 100 to 200 students, and classes are led by untrained teachers who are unmotivated by a system that renders them unable to create anything approaching a genuine learning community. Classes, if the teachers show, generally range from lectures with maybe a couple of questions requiring memorized or one word answers to notes to copy from the chalkboard.
At most Community Day Secondary Schools, there are no laboratory facilities, even though the girls’ final year examination, the Malawi School Certificate of Education exam—MSCE—will consist of a practical or lab as well as theoretical knowledge. Teachers are forced to do a demonstration of a lab for their students or even resorting to such methods as drawing on a chalkboard what a slide under a microscope would look like if there were a microscope and slide available to actually use. It’s entirely possible that the teacher has also never actually seen the slide their drawing.
These schools may be as far as ten to twenty kilometers away from a girl’s village, and few have boarding facilities, frequently leaving the girl in a position of being a self-boarder. This means that she rents or finds a place she can stay that is within walking distance of the school. If she’s lucky, she stays with a relative or friend of the family, however girls often simply rent a place wherever their family can afford it, leaving a girl without the protection of family and her own village and much more vulnerable to sexual abuse from men in the area as well as from teachers at her own school. These problems and others show in Community Day Secondary Schools’ pass rates on the MSCE. Of 70 or so MSCE candidates, the school where I taught would manage to have two or three selected into a college or university, and that was considered remarkable.
If a girl manages to dodge the troubles of Community Day Secondary Schools through high performance in primary school and selection to a government or mission school where there are boarding facilities, the problem becomes cost. This is the boat that the AGE scholars are in. Although the government boarding schools generally have more facilities and more qualified teachers as well as boarding facilities, they can be five or six times as expensive as Community Day Secondary Schools, and mission schools can be 10 times as expensive. Families in difficult situations usually cut a girls’ school fees to save money. Girls whose families cannot afford these fees, such as the AGE scholars, generally either stop school altogether or transfer to a Community Day Secondary School close to home. Also, even higher level schools suffer from lack of materials, overcrowding, and teachers’ reliance on very traditional teaching methods.
This, in as short a way as I can explain it, is what the scholars are up against. At AGE we try to be an ally, a source of support and genuine help to scholars who have demonstrated the ability to succeed at the primary level and potential at the secondary level.
A Community Day Secondary School is a rural secondary school that receives a significant amount of support from the surrounding community. I’ve taught in one for two years, I’ve known volunteers who’ve taught at probably 50 others, and I’ve visited maybe another 20 or 30 since I’ve been in Malawi. Frankly none of them have been equipped to offer anything approaching adequate education. Class sizes can climb as high as 100 to 200 students, and classes are led by untrained teachers who are unmotivated by a system that renders them unable to create anything approaching a genuine learning community. Classes, if the teachers show, generally range from lectures with maybe a couple of questions requiring memorized or one word answers to notes to copy from the chalkboard.
At most Community Day Secondary Schools, there are no laboratory facilities, even though the girls’ final year examination, the Malawi School Certificate of Education exam—MSCE—will consist of a practical or lab as well as theoretical knowledge. Teachers are forced to do a demonstration of a lab for their students or even resorting to such methods as drawing on a chalkboard what a slide under a microscope would look like if there were a microscope and slide available to actually use. It’s entirely possible that the teacher has also never actually seen the slide their drawing.
These schools may be as far as ten to twenty kilometers away from a girl’s village, and few have boarding facilities, frequently leaving the girl in a position of being a self-boarder. This means that she rents or finds a place she can stay that is within walking distance of the school. If she’s lucky, she stays with a relative or friend of the family, however girls often simply rent a place wherever their family can afford it, leaving a girl without the protection of family and her own village and much more vulnerable to sexual abuse from men in the area as well as from teachers at her own school. These problems and others show in Community Day Secondary Schools’ pass rates on the MSCE. Of 70 or so MSCE candidates, the school where I taught would manage to have two or three selected into a college or university, and that was considered remarkable.
If a girl manages to dodge the troubles of Community Day Secondary Schools through high performance in primary school and selection to a government or mission school where there are boarding facilities, the problem becomes cost. This is the boat that the AGE scholars are in. Although the government boarding schools generally have more facilities and more qualified teachers as well as boarding facilities, they can be five or six times as expensive as Community Day Secondary Schools, and mission schools can be 10 times as expensive. Families in difficult situations usually cut a girls’ school fees to save money. Girls whose families cannot afford these fees, such as the AGE scholars, generally either stop school altogether or transfer to a Community Day Secondary School close to home. Also, even higher level schools suffer from lack of materials, overcrowding, and teachers’ reliance on very traditional teaching methods.
This, in as short a way as I can explain it, is what the scholars are up against. At AGE we try to be an ally, a source of support and genuine help to scholars who have demonstrated the ability to succeed at the primary level and potential at the secondary level.
Benja (Ben, AGE Program Director on the ground in Malawi)
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