Challenges facing school managers in the implementation of the revised secondary school curriculum: a case study of four selected secondary schools in lilongwe district

Abstract

In its recent attempt to improve the quality of Education in Malawi, the Malawi Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MoEST) embarked on secondary school curriculum and assessment review in 2012 and implemented it in junior classes in 2015 and senior classes in 2017. So far, there has been no study the researcher is aware of which has been conducted on the challenges facing school managers in the implementation of the revised secondary school curriculum. It is against this background of knowledge gap on challenges facing school managers in the implementation of the revised secondary school curriculum in Malawi, that this study was undertaken to investigate in-depth the challenges facing school managers in the implementation of the revised secondary school curriculum and ways of overcoming those challenges to improve the implementation. The study was conducted in four secondary schools in Lilongwe District which were purposely and conveniently sampled respectively. Two of the schools were urban and the other two were rural. The rural and urban secondary schools participated in this study included all categories of secondary schools in Malawi which are Community Day Secondary Schools (CDSS), National and District secondary schools. Qualitative research method which employed a case study design was used. Twenty participants involved in this study, were purposely sampled. The participants were four head teachers, four deputy head teachers and twelve heads of departments from the sampled schools. Data was collected through interviews, documents review and classroom lesson observation of the heads of departments in order to provide methodological triangulation. Data was analyzed using thematic analysis method deductively and inductively. The results of the study indicated that the implementation of the revised secondary school curriculum is facing challenges such as ineffective orientation of curriculum implementers, including school v managers and teachers, inadequate qualified teachers especially in science subjects, insufficient teaching and learning materials, poor quality textbooks, ineffective inspection by the Ministry of Education, lack of school managers’ supervision of the implementation, lack of support from the schools’ community and ineffective implementation of the route system as well as Chemistry and Physics as separate subjects and Technical subjects and Physical Education as a core subject but non examinable. The study has concluded that the introduction of the revised secondary school curriculum was poorly managed such that schools did not have adequate capacity to successfully implement the teaching of newly introduced curriculum. The study recommended that in future, the ministry of Education, Science and Technology should also make deliberate efforts to ensure that the implementation of the new curriculum is adequately planned in terms of instructional materials, training, orientation and in-service training for school managers and teachers.