MUTHARIKA OPENS CHIRADZULU TEACHERS’ TRAINING COLLEGE

President Peter Mutharika on Wednesday assured Malawians that he would improve education standards in the country.

The President made the remarks during the official opening of Chiradzulu Teachers’ Training College, noting the education sector experiences shortage of teachers resulting in higher teacher pupil ratio.

“I would like to assure Malawians that I’m ready to improve the education sector that has got a lot of challenges, among others, shortage of teachers in most schools across the country. This has resulted in poor education standards,” President Mutharika said.

Mutharika explained that his government was committed to reducing the teacher pupil ratio from 1 to 78 to 1 to 60 by 2017, adding that the current teacher pupil ratio is unacceptable.

“As government, we are committed to improving quality of education in the country and I would like to ask Malawians to raise the flag when it comes to quality education. We must provide teachers with necessary resources and respect them because teaching is the mother of all professions.

The country must raise the teaching standards and teachers must enjoy what people in other professions like engineering are enjoying,” he added.

He assured teachers of more refresher courses and career progression as one of the measures to address low quality education standards in the country.

Minister of Education, Science and Technology, Dr. Emmanuel Fabiano commended government for its efforts to improve education standards in the country. He urged teachers to take their profession seriously in order to improve the education standards across the country.

UNICEF Deputy Country Representative, David Christopher, said his organisation would continue complementing government’s efforts to ensuring that children in the country go to school through construction of the training college in Chiradzulu.

“UNICEF will continue supporting the education sector in the country because we believe that children in Malawi face a lot of challenges when it comes to attaining their education and shortage of teachers in most primary schools also contributes to the low standards,” Christopher said.

The college has been constructed with financial support from UNICEF to the tune of US$ 7.8 million (approximately K4.6 billion at the current exchange rate).

The training college caters for 560 teacher students. mana