“No country can really develop unless its citizens are educated”
- Nelson Mandela
Our Mission
is to provide bursaries for the education of children in Malawi who would otherwise be denied education due to poverty.
The Malawian Education System
Primary education is free in Malawi but secondary education is not, and this is where we come in. In Malawi, pupils sit examinations at the end of their primary school education. They are then selected to secondary schools, depending on the results. In fact, not all students are guaranteed places in secondary schools because places are limited. The secondary schools themselves are also rated, a kind of benchmarking. Thus, students who are selected to enter ‘best-rated’ schools do so on merit and are considered ‘gifted’ students.
How we choose Students
We support students from any background who have been selected for secondary school, provided they satisfy the basic criterion that without support, they would be unable to afford their schooling. We give preference to the top students on the grounds that they are more likely to benefit from the opportunity. Academic merit is the only criterion for choosing between needy students. We don’t discriminate on grounds of gender, age, religion, political views, ethnicity or region.
How we choose Schools
We select secondary schools which are rated highly, and look for students who have earned places at these schools but cannot afford the fees. The schools we choose are all boarding schools, because we think it is good for the student to leave their home life behind. We choose government and mission schools, rather than private schools because the latter are more expensive. Government and mission schools are called public schools in Malawi.
Advancing through the system
Primary school lasts eight years and the usual age for starting secondary school is fourteen. However, attendance at primary school can be sporadic; problems at home can lead to children missing large parts of their education. Also, although primary schools are supposed to be free, the children sometimes have to buy their own books or even pay for support staff, and this can also lead to non-attendance. Students will not advance to the next grade until they have passed the end-of-year exams. This can result in some children taking ten years or more to get through primary school, and they could be in their late teens or older before they start at secondary school. This can happen even to gifted students, and we don’t regard it as a barrier to being funded by the charity.