Malawi is one of the poor­est coun­tries in Africa. One of the great­est con­tribut­ing fac­tors to this is the lack of free edu­ca­tion in the coun­try. Even tougher is find­ing pre-school for chil­dren as it is some­thing only the elite of the coun­try can afford.

From this IPS arti­cle we see how school for chil­dren is con­sid­ered a lux­ury in the coun­try. Writer Claire Ngozo tells us just how few pre-schools there are in the country.

Less than a third of Malawi’s chil­dren attend pre-school; the oth­ers will lag behind their peers for their entire school careers.

For most Malaw­ian chil­dren, school only starts at the age of six — or some­times even later — when they enter pri­mary school. Pre-schools are mainly privately-owned and regarded as a lux­ury since most fam­i­lies can­not afford to pay the fees.

In Malawi, up to 60 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion lives below the poverty line of $1 a day, accord­ing to United Nations sta­tis­tics, while pre-school fees, for the few Malaw­ians who earn a good income, range from $50 to $800 per term.

Not attend­ing a pre-school means that most of the country’s chil­dren miss out on early learn­ing and stim­u­la­tion, accord­ing to the country’s sec­re­tary for gen­der, chil­dren and com­mu­nity devel­op­ment, Olive Chikankheni.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) indi­cates that early child­hood devel­op­ment is crit­i­cal for the for­ma­tion of intel­li­gence, per­son­al­ity and social behav­ior. The effects of neglect in these for­ma­tive years can be cumu­la­tive and lasting.

“Most nurs­ery schools are in urban areas and demand very high school fees, which most peo­ple can­not afford,” con­firmed Chikankheni. About 60 per­cent of Malawi’s pop­u­la­tion live in the country’s rural areas, how­ever, where poverty is rife.

Chikankheni says chil­dren who do not attend pre-school find it dif­fi­cult to socialise with their peers and teach­ers when they start pri­mary school. “These chil­dren take long to adapt to the school envi­ron­ment because they find that they are sud­denly sur­rounded by strangers. As such, they fail to con­cen­trate on their stud­ies,” said Chikankheni.

She says such chil­dren lag behind in their stud­ies, and some per­form below their poten­tial through­out their school-life. 2008 gov­ern­ment sta­tis­tics indi­cate that not even a third of Malawi’s chil­dren have access to pre-school education.

Lim­ited access to pre-school is appar­ent even in urban areas, and within the country’s cap­i­tal Lilongwe. Small chil­dren are seen play­ing unat­tended in town­ship and sub­urb streets dur­ing the day instead of being in school. Many fam­i­lies rather spend the lit­tle money they have on food and other basic neces­si­ties, than on nurs­ery school fees.

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