The Challenges
Enrolment 
97.5 Primary Net Enrolment5 
If current investments and provisions to the education sector are maintained net enrolment is projected to fall short of the MDG target on universal education. Places for 4.8 million will have to be made available to reach universal enrolment by 2018.6 

School Completion 
51% Survival to Last Grade Primary 7 
Malawi still stands far from the MDG goal of achieving universal primary education completion by 2016. And the situation for girls in secondary schools in rural areas, where they are highly vulnerable to discrimination, is much worse - less than 5% of poor rural girls complete secondary school.8

Child Labour
26% of Children in Child Labour 9 
Malawi is amongst the countries in Southern Africa with the highest incidence of child labour. Children engage in labour throughout in several sectors, including commercial farms, domestic work and the informal sector.

Teachers 
74/1 Pupil/Teacher Ratio 10 
The Education Sector Plan (2008-2017) aims to improve the pupil/teacher ratio to at least 1:60 by 2017.11 In order to achieve this goal the teacher workforce would need to grow by 15% annually.12 Now is an important time to ensure that both the government and civil society provide better teacher education and increase retention in rural areas, where schools are largely marginalized.

There are about 293,000 primary school-age children in Malawi who are not going to school - a number that must be reversed! On current trends, Malawi will fall well short of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on universal primary education by the end of 2015.

TAKE ACTION!

Catholic Education Commission in Malawi (CECOM) works to improve quality and access to education in conjunction with the government and local and international partners. Visit CECOM website (http://www.ecmmw.org/commissions/education.html) to find out how you can help secure the right to education in Malawi. 

Child Marriage & Education
Child marriage is one of the main barriers to education for young girls in Malawi. On average, half of all girls are married by their 18th birthday and nearly a quarter are married by the age of 15.2 When girls marry at a young age it often means that they are taken out of school and denied any chance at a future. During the period between 2010 and 2013, more than 27,000 girls in Malawi dropped out of primary schools because of marriage. 3

In order to end the practice of child marriage, we urge faith-based communities and traditional leaders to join us in educating communities about the advantages of delaying the age of marriage and supporting the government to increase the minimum age of marriage from 15 to 18 years. CECOM is working to ensure that a national action plan to combat the consequences of child marriage and secure every young girl’s right to education is implemented – and we need your support! 

Malawi is the country with the 7th highest prevalence rate of child marriage in the world.4 Our girls are being unfairly denied their right to a future and we must take action.

Internationally, CECOM is a member of the Global Faiths Coalition (GFC) for Education - visit the GFC Education website site (aworldatschool.org/global-faiths-coalition) to engage with a multi-faith effort to secure universal primary education across the globe.