Student Performance in Computer Studies in Secondary Schools in Malawi

Abstract

Malawi has a national policy for ICT which emphasizes introduction of computer lessons in the education, especially primary and secondary levels. In response to this, in five years ago, Government of Malawi through Ministry of Education introduced Computer Studies as an optional subject at senior secondary level. Since introduction of Computer Studies in secondary schools, there has been no literature on how students perform in this subject with emphasis on ‘type’ of secondary school, gender and school location. This paper highlights performance of students in Computer Studies with an aim of finding out which schools are doing better than others which will prompt for further study to investigate reasons of success or failure. Private secondary schools are performing better in Computer Studies than government secondary schools and this is not due to location, gender and ‘type’ of school. Particularly government secondary schools need to invest much more in computers, teaching materials and staff in order to delivery this subject to more students than it is now.