Looking at Mtemambalame’s Mission and vision on the notice board which reads: to increase infrastructure, building more classroom blocks, teacher houses, offices, toilets in order to reduce late coming and absenteeism of teachers, learners as well as dropout rates among boys and girls by 2020, one would just interpret the mission plus vision as mere sentences with no substance since what is obtained at the school is not in line with what was written on paper long time ago .
For the past years the school has been lacking a number of facilities such as windows, doors, desks, chairs, tables for teachers, no proper security, insufficient teacher houses, and shortage of toilets.
According to Headmaster at the school, Peter Kalibanda, the situation at Mtema has been very pathetic with a number of challenges, major one being that of not having school desks; hence forcing pupils sit on the floor when learning.
“I started teaching at this school since 2003. I can testify that we have never had desks ever since and is a norm for pupils to sit on the floor. This has contributed to the increase of drop out rate among students as evidenced in 2017 where only 25 students sat for Primary School Examinations from the total annual enrollment of about 800 pupils”, explained the Head Master.
He quickly however mentioned that the problem would slowly be alleviated as for the first time in their history Ministry of Education, Science and Technology in June this year had brought 100 Desks at the school; a development which will motivate students attend classes quite often for they will not be sitting on the floor any more.
“The 100 Desks we have received have been shared in standard 8,7,6, and 5 implying we need more desks in junior classes,” highlighted Kalibanda.
For this to happen, it was because of the score card process which Council for Non Governmental Organisations in Malawi (CONGOMA) did early this year in Partnership with Centre for Youth and Children Affairs (CEYCA) and Centre for Youth Development and Social Empowerment (CYDSE) with financial support from IM Swedish Development Partner. The findings of the exercise which focused on Education and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) were disseminated at an interface meeting in April 2018 where officials from Ministry of Education and other key players were invited to attend the meeting.
It is an exciting news that from what members of the communities raised in front of the duty bearers, the officialas managed to take up the issues further and made it possible to donate the desks at Mtemambalame primary school.
Mtemambalame primary school is found in Lilongwe City North. Despite the challenges the school is reported to be doing well on National Reading Programme where pupils ably read in English and the school is standing out among the 11 surrounding zones.