Evaluating ICT for Education in Africa - Royal Holloway, University of ...

miss using the gadgets. I used to absent myself 50% of the timebefore the gadgets came, now I come to school every day.‟This was confirmed by a teacher from Mwatibu who noted that children fromStandard 3 and 4 were previously often absent from school because theypreferred playing, whereas now they attended school on the days they knewthey would have opportunity to use the devices. Although the teacherswelcomed this change, they also noted that the increased class sizes creatednew challenges (Oketch and Rolleston 2007, EFA 2005) (12/11/07):„The number of pupils have increased. They were lazy anduninterested without the gadgets … In Standard 4 there arenow an extra 15 children attending and in Standard 3 thereare an extra 40 attending. We are very happy that they havecome back … but it does make it more difficult for us becausethere are even more children.‟It was impossible to quantify the exact increase in attendance in the Malawitest schools due to the incomplete school records. Despite this, teachers werekeen to estimate the changes in their attendance figures. A Standard 3teacher from Dzenza (16/11/07) explained:„In my class there are 79 students enrolled, but every day[before the gadgets] there was about 25-35 students attending.Now it has gone up to 66-65 every day and we know it is dueto these gadgets.‟The same was reported in Standard 4, where teachers noted that in one classwith 114 students enrolled, the initiative had caused daily attendance to risefrom 70 to 105 students. This was also confirmed in generic observationsfrom other schools, such as in Mbinzi, where the teachers estimated thatdaily attendance had increased from 70% to 90% (15/11/07).The same sentiment was expressed from within the MoEST in Malawiregarding the effect of the programme in countering absenteeism. In the finalstage of the fieldwork Matilda Gladson Kabuye, an official from the MoEST,explained the reason for the disparity between attendance rates in Standard 1324