Government says it will introduce compulsory basic primary education aiming at reducing number of dropouts.

Speaking at a Government Faces the Press briefing in Lilongwe, Minister of Education Agnes NyaLonje said government intends to construct over 10, 000 classrooms as one way of dealing with the challenge.

She said: “Where there is overcrowding in class, there is likely to be dropouts, so by constructing more classrooms we are actually attaining to that.”

“In education, the things we do have multiple impact, in this year we are going to start the Malawi Education Reform Programme under which we will construct over 10, 000.”

NyaLonje added that authorities are working on training more teachers so that they meet the required teacher pupil ratio.

“You may have classrooms but if teachers are few that means more children under one teacher which is inappropriate,” NyaLonje said.

“So what we are doing as government is that we are working on training more teachers so that they are in accordance with number of learner in a classroom.”

During the briefing, NyaLonje was accompanied by her Deputy Monica Chang’anamuno and Chief Government Spokesperson Gospel Kazako.