Phalombe DEM assures school girls of total support in their education
Phalombe District Education Manager (DEM), Hendrix Likeke has said the education office would engage an extra gear in ensuring that girls in the district are receiving enough support on their education.
The DEM was speaking on Thursday during an education stakeholders’ meeting held in the District organized by Oxfam.
Likeke said the education office was excited by the interest girls in the district had displayed towards education as evidenced by the results of the 2017/18 Primary School Leaving Certificate examinations in which 88.7 per cent of the girls that sat the exams passed.
“For this reason we believe that girls in the district love education and they want to go further, that is why we want to take advantage of the education stakeholders forum to source assistance for girls that are willing to continue with education but cannot afford to pay for it,” he pointed out.
The DEM said among other things his office is planning to institute close engagement of education related Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) with an aim of luring them into extending their education bursaries especially to girls.
Phalombe emerged number one in the national results of the Primary School leaving Certificate (PSLC) with a total pass rate of 93.2 per cent.
Senior Chief Kaduya’s representative, Olive Ndege said on their part traditional leaders had agreed to fully support the DEM’s office in the improvement of girls’ education by among other things abolishing cultural practices that hinder girls from attaining education.
“We chiefs are the custodians of culture and we have the power to abolish some of the traditional activities that are likely to bar girls from attaining quality education; as such we want to ensure the DEM’s office that while they are working on finding financial and material support for the girls, we will ensure that we create an enabling environment for them to continue with the education,” she emphasized.
Meanwhile, some by-laws abolishing showing of public video shows and conducting dances at night have been formed in the area of Senior Chief Kaduya as a way of reducing teenage pregnancies that were evidently a result of such activities.
Phalombe is one of the districts with high rates of girls’ school drop-outs and during the 2017/18 school year over 1,200 girls dropped out of school.
