The Education System in Malawi
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Factors Affecting the Public Unit Costs and Comparisons
Three main factors affect the level of unit costs:
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teachers’ salaries, the student teacher ratio (the lower the student teacher ratio the higher the unit cost), and recurrent expenditures other than teachers’ salaries (for example, personal, ORT, and salaries of non teachers).
Teachers’ Salaries The annual average salary of a primary school teacher in 2007 was MK195,000; this is 5.8 times Malawi’s GDP per capita. The annual average salary of a secondary school teacher was MK350,000, which is 9.8 times the GDP per capita. In 2008, after the salary increase and the implementation of the new salary scale, the average annual salaries were estimated at 6.3 and 11.6 units of GDP per capita, respectively. The salaries vary widely across categories of teachers within the same level of teaching (see Appendix 3.6 for detailed data). When the annual average primary and secondary school teachers’ salaries are compared with other SSA countries with similar GDP per capita (see figure 3A.1 in Appendix 3.1), the data show that Malawi’s teachers are paid above the average for both primary (an average of 4 units of GDP per capita) and secondary (an average of 8.5 units of GDP per capita) levels. As a reference point for primary education, the EFA FTI benchmark for teacher salaries (calculated as the average observed in the countries closest to achieving universal primary completion) is 3.5 times GDP per capita. In higher education, Malawi looks like an outlier: The average annual teachers’ salary is 66 units of GDP per capita, which is 2.7 times higher than the average in economically similar countries with the same information (see table 3.8). Table 3.8: Higher Education Teachers’ Average Salary, as Units of GDP Per Capita for Countries with GDP per Capita Lower than US$500 (2007 or last year available) Average Teachers' Salaries in Higher Education as Units of GDP Per Capita Congo, Dem. Rep. of
4.1
Guinea
10.3
Mali
12.1
Madagascar
12.8
Malawi
65.8
Ethiopia
27.1
Burundi
37.2
Average 7 countries
24.2
Sources: Chapter 7 and World Bank data.