CSR Factory AB - Malawi - besök på Mgodi Primary School

Besök på Mgodi Primary School

Den 20 maj 2010 gjorde Victor Kaonga, journalist på tidningen Nyasa Times, ett besök på Mgodi Primary School i Chinteche i Nkhata Bay området. Skolan har fått en sändning av 600 skolböcker tack vare Malawiprojektet.

Elard Ngoma, biträdande rektor på skolan berättar om hur dessa böcker gör en stor skillnad för eleverna som nu till exempel kan studera två och två i stället för många fler om en bok. Elard berättar också att skolan har över 600 elever och endast 6 lärare och av dessa är bara 4 utbildade lärare.

Nedan följer en utskrift av intervjun som Victor gjorde med Elard Ngoma, biträdande rektor på skolan. För att höra intervjun - klicka på länken:

Interview with Elard Ngomo

Elard: My name is Elard Ngoma. I am the deputy head teacher of Mgodi Primary School which is around the Chinteche area and today we are just very happy because we have received the books which have been bought by our friends in Sweden by the names of Zebbie and Bjorn and the community plus the pupils and even the teachers, we are very happy for this help which has been given to us. We know it is not easy for our friends to buy such books but we are very grateful because today our work has been eased because if the pupils can read they can write from the books and they can copy anything from the books. We are very thankful to our friends who are working in Sweden. Thank you very much.

Victor: Now tell me – how many books are there in total?

Elard: Totally there are 600 books of different subjects, that is English, Chichewa, mathematics and some of them are agricultural and social studies.

Victor: Mgodi Primary School is in Chinteche in Nkhata Bay district. How helpful do you think these books are to the pupils or the learners in this area?

Elard: These books will help the learners very much because at time they had little books whereby they could not read from the books and about ten pupils were gathering at one book which was very difficult for them to read but today the pupils are very happy because they can read a book maybe two at one book which is very possible for them to read.

Victor: This is the first time for me to be at Mgodi Primary School around Chintheche in Nkhata Bay. One of the things that I see that this is a very big school. I am wondering how many pupils and learners are here?

Elard: This school has about 906 learners.

Victor: And with how many teachers?

Elard: There are only 6 teachers.

Victor: So how do you manage?

Elard: We do teach in other classes – Let’s say we have 6 classes and remaining two classes we do inter-teach.

Victor: So about 906 learners from standard one to eight, that is 8 classes and spread around between only 6 teachers.

Elard: Yes, that is true.

Victor: How many are the qualified teachers here?

Elard: About four.

Victor: So basically a total of one teacher per two classes.

Elard: Yes

Victor: And how many classes to you teach yourself?

Elard: I teach two classes that is standard 8 and standard 7.

Victor: How many pupils are there in your classes?

Elard: In study 8 there are 93 pupils and in study 7 there are 57 pupils.

Victor: So how do you manage? That sounds to be too much work for the whole day.

Elard: It needs education that is the quality of the teacher.

Victor: I think it needs more than education on your part because it is just too much. I think 97 plus 53, really talking of 160 learners just under one teacher – for how many hours each day?

Elard: About 6 hours. We also come in the afternoon and evening classes. We do come for night studies from 7 o’clock to 9 o’clock.

Victor: What do the education authorities say about Mgodi? – I mean you seem to be overstressed here.

Elard: What they do is, they say we should look for .... there has to come more teachers from the government but you know this time it is difficult for them to find teachers from the government but they just promised.

Victor: I don’t know how I can manage if it was me teaching but share with me maybe one of the encouraging stories about the pupils that you teach. One of the interesting stories about the pupils that you teach. Any stories of progress, any student, any pupil or a learner that is of great encouragement to you as you teach them in standard 8 or 7.

Elard: Yes, OK what I can say is that just from the look of things from the donations which we just received two more pupils were coming to studies because they had heard the good news about the books which were arriving at our school and the pupils themselves are very hard workers. They get themselves, they work in their groups and that is a thing that you cannot imagine but is is true that the learners are very happy with the books and they are hard workers.