Lilongwe: Donors have threatened to cut or withhold their funding to the Sector Wide Approach (Swap) initiative in the Ministry of Education if progress continues to deteriorate on set indicators. German Ambassador to Malawi Rainer Muller said this in Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe, on Wednesday in his capacity as chairperson of the Development Partners Group in the Education Sector when he opened the 2010 Joint Sector Review Meeting.

Said the envoy: "Our concern is that we are four months into the financial year and 10 months from the signing of the JFA [Joint Financial Agreement] but there are very few results to show for the acclaimed Swap. I have to stress [that] if there is no progress, as shown by the indicators, considerable amounts of development partners’ funds will not be released.”

Muller also expressed concern over the high rate of class repeaters in public primary schools who, he said, are needlessly costing government K2 billion (over $13.1) every year. "Repetition rates remain high and are a source of wastage of resources. With a current repetition rate of 20 percent in primary education, an estimated K1.97 billion [over $13 million] is used annually to deliver education services to repeaters. Enrolment data at the primary level indicates that although access to Standard One in primary education is close to universal, survival remains unsatisfactory with a 35 percent completion rate," he said.

Muller noted that major achievements have been made in the planning and preparation of the sector work programme but stressed that it is now time to move into the new world of implementing the plans and delivering on the objectives. He said: "Even though the Joint Financial Agreement was signed in January this year, there is very little movement on expenditure and three financing agreements still need to be signed by the government before funds can be disbursed.”

Muller said the education sector’s development partners note from the Malawi Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) report for 2010 that achievement of universal primary education is "unlikely to be met", urging government to move fast to produce tangible results on targets set for the Education Swap.

Deputy Minister of Education (Primary and Secondary Education) Wictor Songazaudzu Sajeni attributed the high repetition rate in primary schools to shortage of qualified teachers and high teacher-pupil ratio. Said Sajeni: "You cannot blame the pupils because most schools do not have enough teachers to attend to the pupils in class. For example, last week I went to Maoni Primary School in Zomba where there are eight teachers yet the school has 830 pupils, meaning each teacher is attending to over 100 pupils.”

He said government has increased enrolment of students for teacher training. He said this year they expect to produce 3 800 teachers from 2 500 in previous years in its seven teacher training colleges.

On slow progress on the sector’s Swap targets, Sajeni said this was why they convened the two-day joint review meeting in Lilongwe to evaluate the programme to identify challenges and map the way forward.