Jenipher Changwanda

Although relatively brief, there is a policy in the education sector in Malawi which categorize secondary schools into three. There is National Secondary schools where the ministry of Education Selects students after primary at a nation level. These schools have boarding facilities, and also provide vibrant and quality education. There is also District Secondary School where students selected are from within the district. There is also Community Day Secondary School where students selected are within communities. Many students go to these community secondary school where a lot of sources has said that there is poor standards of education and also students meet a lot of challenges which somehow contribute a lot of the drop out of students especially girls.I produced this Special Report during the sixteen days of Gender Activism. The reporter have been in Mangochi District for 5 years now but to the surprise have seen a lot of girls dropping out of school a lot of cases of early pregnancies and other due health related complications among young people. This prompted me to find out what is the problem because at their age these girls are supposed to be at school. The reporter went to a certain Community day secondary School(CDSS) where the reporter found out that most young girls rent houses around the school since they come from far villages. Though they are near the school , there are still meeting challenges due to lack of protection, sanitation and also to raise money for food and rentals. At the said school there is also only four classrooms and toilets, no head teacher ’s office and staffroom, no library and laboratory and teachers at the school also rent houses in the village because there is no houses for them. The reporter finds this case motivational and a good practice because in the sense that article 14 of the SADC protocol stipulates equal access of quality education ad training for women and men. And also education also links closely to other provisions such as Governance, Sexual reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, peace building, gender based violence and constitution and legal rights. The reporter observe that if countries do not take seriously the education of girls, meeting targets of other articles which link closely with the education will also fail. This material is also worthy for it is also exposing gender blind policies in the education sector which will be helpful as we are setting up the post 2015 agenda.