By Mphatso Nkuonera:
Human Capital Africa Educational Alliance (HCA), a non-governmental organization committed to improving the quality of education for children in Africa, has partnered with the Ministry of Education to support the development of Fundamental learning and Numeracy in the country.
Speaking during a school inspection exercise with senior officials from the Ministry of Education, President and Founder of Human Capital Africa, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili hailed the Minister of Education’s zeal in improving fundamental learning and numeracy and highlighted that change in fundamental literacy is a matter of leadership, discipline and accountability of all leaders in education as well as a supportive environment.
“Firstly, I am so pleased with the enthusiastic leadership of the Minister of Education in wanting to see a change and progress in improving the learning outcomes for children.
“The stage of our partnership is where I had to come to Malawi with my technical team to observe and use our Human Capital Africa score card to measure specific indicators that can tell us what is wrong, what is working, what is the gap and what needs to be corrected,” she said.
Ezekwesili said it is important to empower teachers if weaknesses in foundational levels of education are to be corrected.
“We have seen some teachers here showing that they are quality teachers who need support in order to improve the methods they are applying to teach the children.
“If a teacher is taught properly to know how to teach and how to receive feedback and how to assess whether the “children are learning and how to correct things if they are not learning, that can help to change the situation and make improvements in both literacy and numeracy,” she added.
Deputy Head Teacher for Chinsapo Primary School in Lilongwe hailed the Ministry of Education and their partners for taking much interest in improving the quality of fundamental learning and numeracy which helps in ensuring that children are trained at a young age for a brighter future.
She implored all parents to encourage their children on the benefits of education which opens the way for teachers to know where to start from. Zuze further called for the orientation and training of teachers so that they can give the right materials and lessons to their students.
Speaking during the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Ministry of Education and Human Capital Africa, Minister of Education, Madalitso Kambawuwa Wirima, said the MOU is a sign of commitment that cements the support that HCA is going to be giving to the ministry of education.
“Literacy and numeracy for our pupils in junior primary school is currently lacking, we are told that only 10% of children aged 10 and below on the continent are able to read with comprehension and do basic numeracy and that is why the HCA have come in to give us a tool which will help us understand where we are not doing right so as to change our learning outcomes,” she said.
Following the signing of the Memorandum, the Ministry has further invited its development partners to a roundtable discussion on how they can implement the Human Capital Score Card to improve fundamental literacy and numeracy in Malawi. This happens barely 2 days after the Ministry launched the first ever Complementary Basic Education (CBE) on Wednesday (15 March, 2023) at Lilongwe.
