The SACMEQ II Project in Malawi: a study of the conditions of schooling and the quality of education: Malawi working report

This report provides a description of the results of the SACMEQ II Project - SACMEQ’s second major educational policy research project. The first chapter sets the scene for the results of the Grade 6 study that has been reported in ensuing chapters. The rest of this report is devoted to supplying information from the SACMEQ study. In Chapter 2 the conduct of the study has been summarized. This involves the establishment of the policy research questions, the development of the instruments and the subsequent scaling procedures, the population tested, the sampling procedures used and the calculation of sampling errors, the data collection, the data entry and the cleaning and weighting of the data. Data on the pupils and their home backgrounds have been reported in Chapter 3. Information on the teachers’ characteristics and their viewpoints on teaching, classroom resources, professional support, and job satisfaction and schools have been given in Chapter 4. School headteachers’ characteristics and their viewpoints on educational infrastructure, the organization and operation of the schools, and problems with pupils and staff are presented in Chapter 5. In Chapter 6, the results of the analysis of the equitable allocation of educational inputs to regions and also to schools within regions have been given. The achievement results of both pupils and teachers in reading and mathematics have been reported in Chapter 7. In Chapter 8 the major results have been summarized and suggestions for action by the Ministry have been made.