| Summary: | There has been a growing concern about what would happen to the education sector in
the face of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immune Deficiency
Syndrome (AIDS). The concern has been that the education sector in sub Saharan
Africa (SSA) in particular where most of the infected people live would be devastated
due to teacher absenteeism and deaths resulting from the pandemic. Education sectors
in countries that have high prevalence were expected to collapse. Recent studies
however suggest otherwise and this has resulted in two schools of thoughts: on one
hand that the education sector will collapse and on the other that the effects will not be
catastrophic. This study was conducted in response to that debate and had two
objectives. The first was to examine the impact of HIV and AIDS on primary teacher
attrition in Malawi from 1996 to 2007 and the second was to assess the extent to which
that attrition could be attributed to HIV and AIDS. This, a quantitative study, used
secondary data available in the Ministry of Education and a survey of 820 teachers in
low and high prevalence districts of Dedza and Blantyre respectively. Whilst the
secondary data intended to respond to the first question, the survey responded to the
second by seeking teachers’ views on what they perceived were the impacts of HIV and
AIDS on teachers. As a conceptual framework, studies on the impact of HIV and AIDS
on teachers and theories of teacher attrition were used. The study has shown that
teacher attrition in Malawi is not at a level that would collapse the education sector.
Although there have been notable increases in teacher attrition, mortality rates and
causes of deaths, overall these have not overwhelmed the teaching profession. It
appears that the collapsing thesis did not come to pass because of the effectiveness of
preventive programmes and availability of antiretroviral therapy.
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