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- Teacher James Chinula reading with his Standard 6 class
3 June 2009
It is eight o’clock on a Wednesday morning as students from the BeeHive School in Mzuzu, Malawi begin another day of learning. Standard 6 is continuing their unit on fables with Aesop’s “The Fox and the Sick Lion”, and the students take turns reading the story to each other as their teacher asks probing questions to ascertain the motives of the characters. And now comes the fun part.
“You are going to practice being filmmakers,” teacher James Chinula says to the class, instructing them to draw the tale chronologically in nine parts on paper as if a strip of film. He explains it is up to them to determine how they wish to interpret the story in their illustrations, and announces that the best pictures will be displayed. The students take out paper and pencils and excitedly begin coloring.
In 1994, public primary schools in Malawi stopped charging fees and enrollment soared. Currently 86 percent of children attend primary school. With the surge, however, the education system was unprepared to accommodate so many students. Classrooms are overcrowded, and a shortage of sports and play areas and lack of learning material contribute to the high dropout rate. Only 26 percent of children finish the entire primary cycle (UNICEF).
In Mzuzu, the third largest city in Malawi, there are around seventy to one hundred students per classroom in primary schools. Niall Dorey of York, UK, was a teacher in a public school in Mzuzu and found that the conditions were not conducive to learning. Not only were the class sizes too large, but the blackboard dictation methods did not teach students how to analyze and think creatively. Today eighty percent of students in Malawi do not meet the minimal requirements for reading and mathematics.
To combat these issues, Dorey decided to found his own school in 2003. Starting humbly with just eight students, the school now serves nearly 200. BeeHive follows UK/U.S. lines of education, with classes taught entirely in English, and was recently accepted as an international school.
The school is unique to many schools in Malawi because of its holistic approach to education, encouraging social, moral, and physical development in addition to its emphasis on literacy, science, and mathematics. The curriculum fosters creativity as students paint, draw, perform, and practice creative writing. In addition students have organized sports days and are taken on fieldtrips to visit local industries and natural scenery.
It is 9:00 and Standard 5 has an English lesson by Dorey. Dorey has the twenty-six students of his classroom separated into groups, with the desks forming octagonal tables. Previously the class groups had taken turns writing chapters for their own storybook. Now it is time to complete the book. Each student writes a summary blurb for their book’s back cover; one group of students sort through the suggestions and choose the best two, as two other groups are charged with drafting front covers, and the remaining group, the back cover. At the end of the lesson the students vote on the different parts of their book. Dorey reads the two summary choices, chosen by the groups, and the entire class votes and subsequently cheers as the winner is announced.
The students seem to relish every minute of the lesson. The institution works to stimulate the students’ minds, social skills, and creativity, and fosters teamwork and student collaboration. Since BeeHive’s opening, a few students have graduated and continued their education in very good secondary schools. The BeeHive School is most definitely a school in Malawi where education is flourishing—and fun.
