Teaching in Malawi

 I've 360Life training to various audiences, visiting some CRED partners, and supporting a small team of adults who are coming to Uganda on a voluntourism week.

Tomorrow is the start of a 3-day 360Life workshop that I’m delivering here in Lilongwe, capital of Malawi. It’s for prison chaplains who are part of the Malawian branch of Good News Global, an international charity that seeks to take the gospels into prisons across the world, through word and deed, and I’ll write more about that as it progresses. But today I had a conversation which left me marvelling yet again at just indebted the world is to teachers, and the incredible work that they do in our society.

Whilst in Lilongwe I’m staying with McDonald and Catherine. McDonald is the Malawi national training director for Good News Global, and for whom I’m delivering the 3-day workshop. Catherine is his wife, and she works as a primary school teacher for primary 1 class in the local school. As we chatted, I asked Catherine a bit about her work and the realities of being a teacher in a government school. Her response left me dumbfounded!

Numbers wise, Catherine has 159 students in her class. Yes, that’s right – 159! I had to check three times to make sure that I wasn’t misunderstanding, but that was the number she kept giving me – 159. She did then say that the school have kindly given her a partner teacher, so now there are just 80 in her class, but even so – 80 kids in one class!

I asked how big is the classroom? Apparently, it’s normal size, but no desks as there isn’t room for desks, so all the children sit in rows on the floor. I asked about marking work – ‘oh I do it as we go along’ she said, ‘so that none of the children get left behind’.

I then asked if her class is an anomaly and if the others are all smaller sizes and more manageable – no, apparently each of the 7 year groups in the school is a similar size. So we are talking about schools that have thousands of pupils in them. And the government is doing nothing to try and ease the pressure – no campaign to rapidly build more schools, or train lots of extra teachers, just carry on as is.

The school day is 0730 – 1230, so I wondered if a shift system could be adopted with some children doing morning school and others doing afternoon school to reduce class sizes. Apparently that’s not likely to happen as most of the teachers do private tuition in the afternoon to children on parents who have the financial resources to pay for a tutor to come and supplement the learning of the morning. So the gap between have’s and have-not’s is just going to get wider.

I have always admired teachers for the incredible work that they do – giving tirelessly to support students in their learning and in their development as individuals, as well as all of the pastoral and extracurricular activities that are required of them. I have many friends who are teachers, and I know how hard they work, how much their family life suffers during term time when all focus is on keeping up to date with the massive pressures and workloads.

But today, my admiration went up another notch. Teaching 159 students day in day out – that takes dedication to the growth of the next generation to a new level.

The following photos are taken at the school where Catherine works (on a Sunday, hence lack of students), and includes some of the educational paintings on the walls of the school, so that learning never stops.