The ODL program was envisioned as a temporary measure, originally intended to run for three intakes of 3-5,000 teachers each. The program, for which entry academic requirements were lower than for IPTE, was subject to concern regarding the quality of graduates being produced ( _<u>Malawi24</u>_ <u>, 2015). In 2015, after five intakes, the government announced the suspension of the</u> scheme alongside a major expansion of the IPTE scheme. The last cohort of ODLs are expected to be placed in schools in 2018.

While successful in increasing overall staffing levels in Malawi’s schools, the ODL scheme does not appear to have succeeded in addressing inequities in the distribution of teachers. ODLs were intended to be recruited almost exclusively from zones experiencing shortages of teachers. However, without accurate data available at central level on local variation in PTR, in practice the scheme was implemented along the same lines as the bonding scheme, with ODL recruitment restricted only to the extent of focusing on Malawi’s 30 rural education districts. Although DEMs were encouraged to recruit ODLs from and allocate them to the most understaffed zones, this guidance was not enforced, and DEMs were also subject to the same countervailing pressure from teachers as with IPTE graduates. As a result, prioritization of the neediest zones within districts was largely a failure: analysis of the 2010 recruitment of ODLs found no relationship between the number of ODL recruits in a zone and the proportion of schools in that zone with a shortage of teachers (DeStefano, 2013). Furthermore, once deployed, ODLs are eligible to apply to move to more urban areas on medical or marriage grounds, similar to IPTE graduates.

A common pattern can be identified in each case of Malawi’s attempts to implement policies to address inequities in teacher allocation. The systems created, while well-intentioned, depended on the availability of accurate data on teacher supply and demand to inform the development of rules; and on the willingness of local-level officials to abide by such rules.

In practice, however, the absence of adequate data on these factors meant that a simplistic binary approach, separating rural from urban at district level, became either the official or _de facto_ standard. With almost 90 percent of the teachers in Malawi working in rural districts, this approach fails to adequately target teachers and incentives. Furthermore, the absence of data meant that public officials were in practice left exercising a high degree of discretion in the implementation of rules, leaving them exposed to significant pressure from teachers and other interests.

# **3. Data and Methodology**

The primary analysis in this paper is based on: (1) data on teacher placement, collated from various administrative sources; (2) geospatial data on the locations of public primary schools and major trading centers; (3) school-level characteristics, including student enrollment; and (4) trading center amenities. All four data sets were developed from government sources, combining and reconciling administrative sources, and validated by DEM offices.

As the result of fragmented governance structures, teacher management data in Malawi is spread across multiple sources. MoEST’s central record of teacher placement is drawn from the Education Management Information System (EMIS), which also tracks enrollment, various measures of school infrastructure, and basic educational outcomes on an annual basis. EMIS data, collected annually by DEM offices and collated by MoEST, provides one record of teacher placements, enrollment, and therefore school-level PTRs. The record of teacher payroll, managed by 13