School fund remains insufficient for Madagascar’s schools
By the AFREEQUE newsroom, based on L'Express de Madagascar
The school fund finances the day-to-day running of Malagasy public schools, but headteachers say the amount is insufficient to cover ordinary needs. In 2024, the Ministry of National Education said it had paid 65 billion ariary to nearly 30,000 schools, according to L’Express de Madagascar.
The school fund, an allowance for the day-to-day expenses of Madagascar’s public schools, does not meet all their needs, according to several headteachers interviewed by L’Express de Madagascar. A headteacher at a public primary school in Antananarivo said, for example, that chalk stocks are running low and that the school still uses a notebook to record absences because it lacks attendance registers.
Each school receives two allocations, one from the state and another from partners, with the amount depending on the number of pupils. In 2024, general education colleges in Antananarivo received more than 3 million ariary, compared with 400,000 ariary for some rural schools. The Ministry of National Education says it paid 65 billion ariary to nearly 30,000 public schools that year.
The grant can be used for only five categories of spending: operating supplies, teaching materials and educational aids, minor maintenance work, school sport, and transport costs associated with withdrawing the funds and buying supplies. One headteacher quoted by the newspaper said an annual allocation of 1.67 million ariary was enough for day-to-day operations, but not to cover all the school’s needs.
