Malawi 2021 Global Action Week for Education: A Call to Action to Improve and Increase Public Financing for Education in Malawi
Now more than ever the Universal Human Right to Education is in danger. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the education of more than one billion children across the world and has aggravated the existing global education financing crisis. This has upended the education sector and greatly threatened the progress of the entire Sustainable Development Agenda and specifically Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4).
For this year’s Global Action Week for Education (GAWE), the world’s largest civil society movement for the right to education is calling upon governments and other stakeholders for more and better financing for education to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.
Civil Society Education Coalition (CSEC), Save the Children, Action Aid Malawi and Coalition for Child Rights joins the Global Campaign for Education and its partners world-wide to commemorate the 2021 GAWE by issuing a call for urgent action for education financing. The call underscores the fact that, without proper investment in education the promise of accessible, equitable, quality inclusive and relevant education will not be realized by the 1 billion children that have been affected by the pandemic world-wide, Malawi included.
This year’s G.A.W.E will be celebrated under the themeEducation Financing, in-line with the Policy Framing of the One Billion Voices campaign. This perfectly aligns with CSEC and its partners’ stance that Government and the International Community should ensure more and better financing of education, especially in this period whereby the pandemic has affected the education of almost 6 million children in Malawi.
The education sector in Malawi was already facing a devastating crisis and the pandemic has only exacerbated this. The pandemic hit an education system that already has 86,000 teacher deficit in both primary and secondary education and currently leaves 2,592,000 pupils in primary school to learn out in the open due to the lack of an estimated 21600 classroom blocks (2020 E.S.P.R). According to the 2020/21 FY budget, government allocated MWK 46.00 per learner for Teaching and Learning Materials (TLM) in primary education. These challenges are just the tip of the iceberg and are some of the few parameters that have triggered our call for better education financing.
The challenges of public financing and the ever-increasing pressure on resources for public services, are resulting in decreased prioritisation in the funding of education. While some learners have returned to school, a large number has not. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic deepened digital exclusion of many, especially those from the most marginalized and vulnerable communities and groups, including girls and children with disabilities.
It is against this background that CSEC and her fellow GCE Partners have lined up quite a number of very important activities to celebrate the 2021 GAWE. These include but are not limited to the following: Press Briefing, Live phone in radio program, Open days in four districts namely, Mwanza, Neno, Ntchisi and Mzimba south, High-level Lobby Meeting with key national stakeholders in Education: Ministry of Education, Ministry of Finance, Parliamentary committees on Education, Social welfare and Finance; and the Development Partners. The partnership believes that, these activities convey our demands to the relevant authorities as stipulated below:
- Increased and improved domestic financing for education
The partnership is calling upon government to deliver on commitments made to domestic financing within the Incheon 2030 Framework to Action, to protect the progress being made towards the achievement of SDG4. Domestic resources remain the most important source for sustainable funding of education. Hence the government should make a clear commitment to provide equitable financing proportionate with the country’s educational priorities, needs and capacities to advance the progressive realisation of the right to education for every Malawian.
The National budget must have the sensitivity to respond to the poorest and most marginalised in order to counteract inequality, discrimination and exclusion in education. It is known that the most marginalised groups often receive the least resources. By allocating a progressive budget to the most disadvantaged communities, the State must also guarantee that other targets can be achieved, related to learning quality, teacher’s professional development, access to cultural assets, global citizenship education and lifelong learning.
2. The government must increase its tax base in order to increase domestic resources available for education and other public services
Substantive tax reforms are needed to fairly increase the size of the overall government budget and as a result increasing the education budget proportionately as well. The partnership believes that the only practical and realistic way for countries to deal with these competing pressures on government budgets is to maximize the revenue available by building progressive and expanded domestic systems of taxation, reviewing tax and royalty agreements in the corporate sector, particularly the natural resource sector, and closing loopholes which enable tax avoidance and evasion by the private sector, through which Malawi loses billions of Malawian kwachas a year.
3. Urgent debt servicing action must be taken including debt cancellation for the least developed countries
The allocation of domestic financial resources to pay debt servicing rather than ensuring people’s basic human rights, will significantly impact the countries’ development in the short and long-term if no urgent action to alleviate or cancel debt is taken. Recent evidence suggests that the international community’s failure to provide upfront debt relief for countries whose financial resources have been allocated to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, have forced a significant number of countries to cut public budgets. Analysis reveals that 40 out of 80 countries have implemented “off-setting expenditure cuts worth 2.6 per cent GDP in 2020”.
4. States must ensure education systems promote equity, equality and focus on the most marginalisation
For education to contribute and fulfil the principles in the Sustainable Development Agenda of “Leave No One Behind”, educational institutions must be inclusive and actively promote equity and equality. This means that barriers which exclude some students from accessing education or which impair their success once they are in schools should be addressed in all aspects of social and school life. Inclusive education is aimed at ensuring that all learners, regardless of their linguistic and cultural backgrounds, physical and mental abilities or other personal characteristics, learn together in a welcoming and supportive environment”.
5. States must provide free quality education for all and end the trend towards the privatisation and commercialisation of education
The partnership urges the end of the trend towards the increased privatization and commercialization of education which emerged ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic and has accelerated since the start of the pandemic.
6. States must improve the quality of teaching through adequate provision of teaching and learning materials and adequate recruitment, remuneration and continued teacher training
The partnership is calling upon government to adequately provide TLMs that are inclusive sensitive. The availability of good infrastructure and teachers will in itself not assure access to quality, relevant and inclusive education. That is why it is paramount that the Government ensures that every school has adequate TLMs. To achieve this, Government should increase financing for education and strengthen financial controls and accountability at all levels, among others
Additionally, the Government must review, analyse and improve the quality of teacher training (pre-service and in-service) and provide all teachers with quality pre-service education and continuous professional development and support including orientation about the use of technology for education purposes.
The COVID-19 pandemic is challenging education systems and the teaching profession has been at the forefront of the response, leading the way to find and implement creative and innovative solutions and create new learning environments for their students. However, the mobilisation of teachers to rise to the challenge at hand is in complete disconnect with the difficult working conditions, lack of means, support and recognition that teachers have experienced, even before the pandemic.
Hence We, GCE Partners, therefore, in pursuant of our mandate wish to reiterate that Education Cannot Wait! And that Nobody Should Be Left Behind! We, therefore, would like to call upon the Malawi Government, International Community, Development Partners and educational stakeholders’ to ensure more and better financing of education.
Media Contacts
Benedicto Kondowe, Executive Director, Civil Society Education Coalition
Assan Golowa. Executive Director, Action Aid Malawi
Lawrent Kumchenga, Campaigns and Communications Manager, Save the Children
Henry Machemba, National Coordinator, NGO Coalition on Child Rights
