Speaking Monday in Mzuzu when he opened a regional stakeholder dialogue meeting for northern and central east education chapter, Msaka asked delegates to ensure that learners should start learning things that will make Malawi competitive against other countries.
“Let us consider the 21 century skills, where we deliberately develop an awareness of and proficiency in critical thinking and problem solving, collaboration and communication, creativity and imagination, digital literacy and other relevant skills,” he said.
Msaka observed that some things taught in secondary school over the years may not be relevant in this contemporary world.
“For instance, is the Pythagoras Theorem still relevant? I can’t even use it since [I studied it] but I’m still alive,” he wondered, sending delegates into laughter.
“In the past we were dissecting frogs and lizards. The world has transformed technologically and a leaner today might be required to fix a mobile
phone, for instance,” he said.
Msaka said time has come for Malawi to take a serious look at the secondary school education and make both intellectual and financial investment in it.
The dialogue meeting was attended by the academia, traditional leaders, secondary school students and development partners, among others to review secondary education in Malawi in terms of enrollment, resourcing and curriculum, among other things.
UNICEF Malawi’s education specialist, Kimanzi Muthengi, noted that the country was enrolling many learners into primary school but few were proceeding to secondary school.
“While we have five million learners in primary school, we have about 400, 000 in secondary schools and about 300, 297 are in public schools. So these are worrying figures,” he said.
Muthengi said according to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), education is a basic right that begins from early childhood education, therefore, one should enjoy that right up to the point he or she gets skills to go to work.
“But you find that when you don’t have a robust secondary education system, you don’t get to work. You continue being a manual labourer because that is what is on offer.
“So we are losing opportunities in technology, in developing new frontiers of employment such as sports and arts industries because of a constrained secondary system,” he said.

New senior secondary school curriculum, teachers and learners in several schools, especially Community Day Secondary Schools (CDSSs) located in rural areas, are still using books recommended in the old curriculum due to the absence of the new books.
Some teachers and learners that we talked to have said the situation spells doom for the current crop of Form Three students, whose performance in examinations may be negatively affected.
A teacher at a Dowa-based CDSS said most schools do not have recommended textbooks as the second term of the 2017/18 academic year comes to an end.
“As for me, I am using the old textbooks. I just select the topics that relate to the subject at hand, although the content is not the same. I even tell my students to brace for tough times ahead,” the teacher said.
In a ministerial statement issued last week, Minister of Education, Science and Technology, Bright Msaka, told Parliament that, with regard to textbooks for senior secondary, procurement has been completed and the award of contract would be done by February 25 2018.
“All schools will be able to have books soon,” Msaka said.
But Civil Society Education Coalition (Csec) Executive Director, Benedicto Kondowe, has said it is worrisome that the new textbooks are nowhere to be seen despite assurances from the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology that everything was under control.
“Now they are saying the process has commenced, and the question is: Which is which? We are worried that the ministry is not doing much despite that resources were available and committed to this process,” Kondowe said.
The new senior secondary curriculum was rolled out in September 2017 at the beginning of the 2017/18 academic year.