and year-round road access at the school. Category B schools, considered moderately remote, may be far from a well-developed trading center, with full facilities at the school; or less than 14km from a trading center lacking in amenities. Category C schools, which are not remote, are 7-14km from a well-developed trading center and have full facilities at the school, or are less than 7km from a well-developed trading center. **<u>Table 4</u>** summarizes the category criteria.<sup>18</sup>

**<u>Table 5</u>** shows the distribution of schools, teachers and students between the categories. The largest category is Category C, with 39 percent of schools, while Categories A and B have 30 and 31 percent of schools respectively. Predominantly more developed centers of districts and zones have the majority of their schools in Category C, while schools further from trading centers typically have large numbers in Categories A and B.

As expected, PTRs rose steadily at each level of remoteness. Well-connected Category C schools had an overall category ratio 70.2 – below the national PTR of 1:78 – while the most remote Category A schools have an overall ratio of 92.0. Taking the more relevant measure of the average school-level PTR, the difference is similar, with Category C schools presenting an average PTR of 80.7 and Category A an average of 100.6.

The categorization can be illustrated through our case study schools in Nathenje, Lilongwe Rural East.<sup>19</sup> Remote Khuzi school, at 8.6km from a trading center lacking basic facilities, is classified as Category A, the most remote. Chibubu school, 3.6km from a center lacking basic facilities, is classified as Category B. Mwatibu school, based within the Nathenje trading center, is classified as Category C, not remote.

# **5.2. Targeting of new teachers according to classification of schools**

Malawi is expecting to hire about 5,000 IPTE-qualified teachers in 2017. This will improve the national PTR from 78 to 73, moving Malawi closer to its goal of a national PTR of 60. However, if the 2017 intake were distributed in line with the current distribution of teachers, this would have the effect of allocating 2,634 teachers to Category C schools which are already typically overstaffed, and only 1,013 teachers to the Category A schools which are most understaffed, maintaining and deepening existing inequities <u>[</u> **<u>Table 6</u>** <u>]. More extensive targeting of new</u> teachers, informed by the new classification, is required to achieve rapid improvements in PTR disparities.

Under a more targeted approach, DEMs would be provided with guidelines to allocate teachers to schools in two stages – first, as now, by excluding schools which already have PTRs below the target of 60; then, by prioritizing Category A and B schools with a view to minimizing the disparity in PTRs between categories. Under this approach, all new teachers being deployed in 2017 would be allocated to Category A and B schools.

**<u>Table 7</u>** shows the potential impact of such an approach. The impact is striking: under this approach, it is possible to almost equalize the difference in category-level PTR between categories

> 18 **Table 15** , in Annex 1, provides full descriptions of categories (available online: see page 40).

> 19 Table 12, in Annex 1 (available online: see page 40).

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