The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 reviews the system of allocation of teachers in Malawi, and the recent history of attempts to reform the allocation of teachers and address inequities, and the ways in which poor administrative data have prevented meaningful reform from becoming embedded in the system. Section 3 describes the process through which data were collected and analyzed and the extent of fragmentation and inconsistency between administrative data sources. Section 4 presents the findings addressing our first proposition, demonstrating the extent of PTR variation and the relationship between these variations and teachers’ preferences, as well as the results of a political economy network mapping exercise carried out to illustrate the local-level dynamics of teacher allocation. Section 5 addresses our second proposition, introducing a rules-based classification of schools by remoteness and presenting evidence and simulations of the potential impact of rules-driven policy employing this classification on PTR disparities. Section 6 discusses the results and concludes.

# **2. Teacher allocation in Malawi**

## **2.1. Institutional and policy arrangements for teacher allocation**

Governance in Malawi, at the local level, has been marked by institutional fragmentation and competing mandates (O’Neil and Cammack, 2014). This fragmentation and structural opacity is observable within the management of education, with a number of different government departments and agencies playing a role in the recruitment, deployment and promotion of teachers. Like many other African countries, Malawi operates a two-stage system of teacher allocation and management, where central-level officials conduct recruitment of teachers into the system and allocate them to districts, while district-level officials allocate teachers to individual schools. This requires that accurate data on teacher demand and supply, and clear rules for allocation, be in place at both the central and local levels to ensure the appropriate allocation of teachers. In the absence of complete and credible data, Malawi’s system relies on broad rules, based around binary concepts of _rural versus urban_ and _overstaffed versus understaffed_ ; as a result, officials exercise considerable discretion in the allocation of teachers to schools, while teachers possess considerable power to influence their postings.

Overall responsibility for education in Malawi, including the setting of policies, curricula, examinations and standards, rests within MoEST. Primary education is based in the Directorate of Basic Education (DBE), which has overall responsibility for management and monitoring of primary education. Other MoEST departments and agencies have a role in the management of teachers, notably the Department of Teacher Education and Development (DTED), responsible for teacher training and professional development; and Malawi Institute of Education (MIE), which carries out some training of teachers in addition to its core role of curriculum development.

Responsibility for on-the-ground provision of primary education lies with Malawi’s 34 education districts. These districts are aligned with the 28 administrative districts of Malawi, with four large districts possessing more than one education district. Each district supports a small office permanent staff, including a District Education Manager (DEM), a deputy DEM, and a dedicated HR officer among others. DEMs are responsible for most day-to-day matters of education in their districts, including management of teachers. Each education district is divided into 8-15 zones, each containing around 6-10 primary schools. Zones are overseen by Primary Education Advisors (PEAs), with responsibility for supporting headteachers and teachers in their zones.

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