Textbook Distribution
The summary below was provided by the Peace Corps Volunteer and the community administering this project.
Map of MALAWI
Throughout Malawi's secondary school system is an endemic lack of textbooks. For a time this great need was quelled by a Danish educational organization which formed a cluster arrangement in the school system, organizing secondary schools into a structure conducive to controlled funding. The cluster structure allowed for easy communication, ordered regional meetings of administration, and financial reliability for textbook distribution within schools. In 2003, however, the organization retracted its funding from the Malawian government. While the cluster formation is still utilized by the Ministry of Education, the funding of the schools has decreased dramatically, and the urgent textbook shortage has rematerialized, worsening greatly over the past nine years. Despite lack of external funding, the organization's Textbook Revolving Fund system is still in place and the government-mandated rate remains at MK250 per student per year. This issue has been greatly compounded in 2012 as the rate has stayed concrete despite the dramatic devaluation of the Malawian Kwacha and resulting increase of textbook prices.
Currently in the local Secondary School Cluster, a group of eleven secondary schools, many students and teachers suffer an estimated average ratio of one textbook for every fifteen students. In even more unfortunate cases within the cluster the teacher may possess only one or two textbooks for a class of 60-170 students.
These eleven schools have united to implement a textbook distribution project, which would improve education by increasing textbook accessibility for students and increased curriculum familiarity and planning possibilities for the teachers.
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