Unlike in the States, where you can decide what career you want while in college or choose a career path yourself, Malawi is different. Here, you have to choose the career you want before applying to college as you will specifically apply to the college program specific to your career. These applications are largely based on how you perform on your Form 4 exams during your last year of secondary school. So, in many ways that national exam at the end of secondary school will decide your career. (This is similar to the university structures in places like France and England!) If you perform very well, then you can be a doctor, engineer, or lawyer, for example. If you don’t do as well, then you are limited in the careers you can choose.
An interesting example of this is teaching. In Malawi, teaching is not considered as prestigious a career. As a result, many of the other teachers didn’t actually want to go into teaching. When I asked them if they always wanted to be a secondary school teacher, many of them laughed and thought that was a funny question, and then each told me what they had actually wanted to be. The reason it is not coveted as much is because the pay is very low. Many of the teachers at my school also have to have a second job or business so that they can provide for their families. However, remember that the teachers teach both day and open school. The day school is from 7:30am-2pm and the open school from 2-5pm. You can see how that could make it difficult to have a second job or business. It can create a lot of stress.
This is why education and doing well on these exams is so vital to success in Malawi.
