Chikolombe Community Day Secondary School from Milinga Village, Traditional Authority Kapichi in Thyolo district and is one of the secondary schools in Malawi in which the Creative Centre for Community Mobilization has been working to improve education qualities for both girls and boys under the Let Girls Learn project funded by Echidna Giving.
As one of the ways of ensuring that students stay focused on their education, CRECCOM introduced remedial lessons that aim to support students (specifically those who re-admitted or were absent from school) to catch up on the content covered while they were out of school, the project will work with teachers from the 36 IEQ-CDSS schools to offer remedial classes.
The headteacher for Chikolombe CDSS, Darlington Maulana, said that his school has benefited a lot in terms of reducing the number of school dropouts in girls.
“In the past, most of our girls were dropping out of school as they were not focused on their education. With COVID-19, they thought that their education will not proceed as they were closed due to the negative impact of the pandemic,” said Maulana
One of the students at the school, Rejoice Mulupala, 14, is a form 2 student the school and said that she used to listen to radio lessons that were being aired on Mzati FM and they were in English and she felt as if she was in class since the schools were closed during that moment
Maulana in his office at Chikolombe CDSS
The headteacher said that since the lessons were also in the English language, there has been an increase in the number of female students who passed their MSCE exams at the school last academic year
“A total of 12 girls passed their MSCE exams with flying colors as compared to the previous academic years and this class was out of 40 students and to us this is a great achievement we have ever witnessed here at the school