Access to quality education still a challenge in Nsanje
Adoption of the One Teacher One Class Policy by the Nsanje District Education Office has exposed serious gaps in the education system in the district with huge shortages of teaching and learners materials in most primary schools in the district.
Currently, some classes in some schools are still taking place under trees and not proper class room blocks, a situation which the new policy will strive to rectify.
In an interview on Tuesday, Deputy Head Teacher for Nsanje Catholic Primary School, Martin Namaona, welcomed the new policy saying it would help reduce some of the problems their school is experiencing such as those concerning inadequate classroom blocks and teaching and learning materials.
He said currently, standard four, five and six learners at Nsanje Catholic Primary School learn under trees without portable boards hence the new policy may change this.
Another Deputy Head teacher, Peter Kapenda, at Nyamadzele Primary school also bemoaned the current situation at their school saying learners from standards three to six learn under trees at their school.
“As you are aware, Nsanje District is one of the districts in the country with very hot weather conditions and learners experience bad weather conditions when learning outside classroom blocks and this negatively affects their performance. Even during rainy seasons, classes are disturbed by the rains forcing children not to learn,” bemoaned Kapenda.
Commenting on the problem at hand, Nsanje District Education Manager, Towera Masoka Banda, blamed the schools’ management for some of the problems saying they should use their school improvement grants to address some of the problems which include constructing classroom blocks.
“One Teacher One Class is not a new policy. The only problem is that most teachers are lazy. The strategy would help get rid of laziness among the teachers thereby improving the learners’ performance,” said Banda.
On the shortage of classroom blocks, she also tipped the schools to introduce morning and afternoon shifts in the schools where some pupils could lean during the morning while others learn in the afternoon.
