Abstract

As a way of addressing the problem of medical doctors children and youth, the Malawi Government in conjunction with a German Funding Agent, GTZ, has designed and is implementing an accelerated learning programme known as Complementary Basic Education (CBE). The programme allows out-of-school children and youth to attain a basic education equivalent to completion of Standard 5 of formal primary school. Learners who complete the CBE programme have sufficient literacy, numeracy and other basic skills to return to formal primary school at Standard 6. Studies done so far, concentrated on evaluating the effectiveness of CBE during its pilot phase which started as a project from 2006 to 2008 and the experiences of learners as they went through the CBE course during the pilot period. No known study had focused on the experiences of the graduates from CBE who rejoined formal primary schools after completing the pilot phase. Using phenomenology and concurrent-mixed as its methodology and design respectively, this study aimed at exploring the academic and social experiences of learners from CBE who were being integrated into primary schools in Chikhwawa District. The findings have been explained using a theoretical framework based on Tinto’s (1975, 1993) theory of student retention and departure. In general, the study has shown that learners from CBE integrated well academically as a result of good background in literacy and numeracy skills that interacted well with primary school academic experiences such as use of library. However, the study has also established that some social experiences in primary schools facilitated while others acted against successful integration of learners from CBE schools into formal schooling in Chikhwawa District. The main argument of this study is that while in some cases a mismatch between previous experiences of learners at CBE schools and academic and social experiences in primary schools disturbed their successful integration into primary schools in Chikhwawa District, in other instances a mismatch acted as an attraction to those graduates and enhanced their integration. This is a slight expansion to Tinto’s theory which sees a mismatch as having negative impact and a match as having positive impact on integration of students in their new institution of learning.

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School	: School of Education
Issued Date	: 2013

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