UNESCO held a global meeting ‘Building strong foundations’ with partners to discuss how to support children and younger learners to thrive in their education and lives through education for health and well-being, including the provision of age- and developmentally appropriate comprehensive sexuality education.
Joshua Munthali, a curriculum specialist on life skills education at the Malawi Institute of Education shared how developing a relevant curriculum contributes to building strong foundations, and empowering young people to build the skills, values, attitudes and knowledge they need to lead healthy and happy lives.
What is the work of the Malawi Institute of Education? How do you work with UNESCO in Malawi?
The Institute has a social function of ensuring that education is of high quality. As a national curriculum development centre, its mandate includes the design, development, monitoring and evaluation of the national school and primary teacher education curricula. MIE also ensures that teachers and other stakeholders understand the curriculum so that they carry it forward effectively. Trainings are critical to achieve this. UNESCO supports the Institute with curriculum review of life skills education, provides teachers and other education personnel with trainings to build an understanding on what life skills education is, why it is important and what benefits it can offer to learners throughout their education and lives.
As a curriculum specialist, I participated in a regional in-service training of trainers organized by UNESCO in South Africa on CSE. The training was an eye opener and helped me to understand life skills education, and specifically CSE, as part of the curriculum.
With the skills I learned at the training, my fellow trainers and I helped build the capacity of education officers supporting groupings of primary schools (referred to as principal education advisors), and life skills education teachers in primary schools in the North, centre and South of the country on the value and importance of CSE and its teaching methodologies. These teachers also received reference materials and resources such as UNESCO’s , among others.
Your work focuses on developing life skills curricula to help build healthy behaviors in young people. Could you tell us a bit about it? Why is your work important? Why do young people in Malawi need life skills education/CSE?
No society can thrive if its youth are not healthy. Life skills education was introduced over 20 years ago in primary schools in Malawi to help young people develop healthy behaviours. It includes concepts such as health promotion, social development, moral development and physical development, among others. For example, under the health promotion concept, “the learner will be able to make informed decisions and demonstrate health promoting behaviour in his/her personal life as well as in his/her community and wider environment with particular attention to prevalent diseases such as malaria, STIs, HIV and AIDS”.
I see the work I do as a curriculum specialist as vital, especially to ensure that life skills taught in classrooms responds to the needs and aspirations of Malawi’s young people.
Young people face many challenges and uncertainties in their lives as they grow up. In Malawi, early and unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections are prevalent among adolescents, and unemployment rates have increased. Life skills, as a subject, empowers learners to adapt and adopt the skills, values, attitudes and knowledge they need as they grow and explore in their communities. It empowers them with decision making and critical thinking skills, assertiveness, coping with stress, anxiety and many others benefits.
Malawi is currently reviewing the life skills curriculum. How has UNESCO supported you in this process? What are the key milestones?
Malawi is expected to review its life skills curriculum, among other subjects taught in primary and secondary schools. Contributing to this process, UNESCO supported a curriculum audit for life skills at both primary and secondary levels and a literature review. The audit revealed gaps such as a lack of content of mental health, cyberbullying and menstrual hygiene management, and strengths in the provision of life skills education, and these findings will be used during the review process to improve curricula. For example, this audit found that while learners aged 12 or 13 learn about values and sexuality, the topic of contraceptives is missing from the curriculum for this age group. 91鶹Ʒ also shared reports such as the situational analysis of CSE in primary schools and teacher education in Malawi with the Ministry of Education and MIE. All these will be instrumental during the review process.
What other materials will be developed to accompany the new curricula? How does MIE support their use in schools?
Once the curricula are reviewed and finalised, curricula frameworks are produced to guide the application of curricula, together with the development of syllabuses, teacher guides and learner books. MIE supports the use of these documents in schools by training teachers, and monitors and evaluates how these documents are taken up in schools.
What advice would you give your young self about growing up, health and relationships?
You should not be afraid to walk away from a relationship that no longer makes you happy. Open up and don’t be afraid to speak up or express your individual thoughts in an honest and respectful manner. Each relationship requires effort and compromise from both ends.
*Life skills education is the subject through which CSE is taught in schools in Malawi, including at teacher training institutions.
This work is part of the overarching efforts under the Our Rights, Our Lives, Our Future (O3) programme which supports 33 countries across sub-Saharan Africa to provide good quality CSE. The programme aims to empower young people with the skills, knowledge and attitudes they need to learn well and lead healthy lives.
- UNESCO’s work on
