President Lazarus Chakwera has told a summit in the United States that Malawi will construct and adequately equip more secondary schools and teachers’ houses and improve primary school teachers’ welfare.
President Chakwera was speaking yesterday at the UN Transforming Education Summit hosted by the United Nations Secretary General António Guterres at the UN Headquarters in New York, US.
“Malawi commits to scaling up best practice teaching and learning innovations and technologies, with expanded access to digital learning opportunities, including for science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics. Accordingly, educational institutions will be enabled with energy, connectivity and digital skills training,” said President Chakwera.
According to State House, Chakwera also told the gathering that government is committed to sustaining allocation to the education sector of at least 15 to 20 percent of national expenditure by 2030.
“My government affirms its support for the new Global Compact on Education Financing,” said President Chakwera when he outlined thematic action tracks as commitments within the overarching cost Blended Education Strategy for Transformation.
“This includes increasing tax-to-GDP ratio by 5 percentage points to 21.4 percent through progressive tax reforms by 2030 and to sustain allocation of at least 15 to 20 percent of national expenditure, and at least 4 to 6 percent of GDP, for domestic financing of education,” he said.
He further told the summit that Malawi reconfigured the school calendar to enable learners to catch up on days lost due to the COVID-19 pandemic, introduced remedial lessons and intensified back-to-school campaigns for school dropouts.
“We are also set to establish a national ‘Education Radio’ station, as well as a digitalized secondary school curriculum for increased access to education, and now many of our higher education institutions are developing their online education capabilities,” he said.
The President said education will be mandatory from early childhood to secondary level in Malawi to achieve a 100 percent primary and secondary completion rate in a safe learning environment by 2030.
Chakwera then pleaded with developed nations to put into action the Doha Programme of Action for the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) calling for properly designed digital education platforms that could revolutionize education and expand opportunities.
“Please put it to good use and remember that it is a programme of action, not a programme of empty talk,” said Chakwera, who is also the chairperson for the LCDs.
“I, therefore, call upon all of you to support us Least Developed Countries in our quest to transform education for meaningful human capital development in LDCs. The time is now,” he said.
The education summit was one of the engagements organized by the UN Secretary General ahead of the official opening of the 77th United Nations General Assembly on September 20, 2022.
Source: State House Malawi Facebook Page
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