• Advocates and lobbies for actions and policies needed to ensure that every citizen of Malawi can realize their rights to quality, free public education;

• Provides a common platform and meeting point for CSOs to undertaken activities to advance quality basic education for all;Co-operates with national, sub-regional, regional and global networks in pursuit of its aims; and

• Seeks to form a national movement to promote and monitor the implementation of the right to basic education and the achievement of related plans.

Since its establishment, the CSCQBE has provided technical and moral support to the government of Malawi in its education and poverty reduction programs.   The Coalition’s strategic activities include:

1. Undertaking budget monitoring, to hold the government accountable and transparent in the use of funds.  It focuses on pro-poor expenditures: teaching and learning materials, teacher training and welfare, inspection, special needs education, and cross cutting issues of gender and HIV/AIDS.  It focuses on the budget at all levels (national, district and school) to determine if the funding is adequate, and tracks allocations to see whether they are reaching their intended beneficiaries. 

2. Carrying out research on educational issues to collect adequate information for planning and advocacy.  The key emphases are on access, equity, quality and relevance of education, looking at enrolment of pupils, drop-out rates, absenteeism (both pupils and teachers), community work, HIV/AIDS impact, violence against pupils, teacher distribution, etc.

3. Building the capacity of CSOs attached to the Coalition in research, advocacy, policy analysis, communication, project management, monitoring and evaluation.

4. Advocating for the achievement of Education for All (EFA) goals as well as the education Millennium Development Goals (MDGS). In this regard it advocates for expansion of early childhood development, universal free and compulsory primary education, life skills development for out-of-school youth, increase in adult literacy, gender parity in primary and secondary education as well as improvements in quality and excellence in education.

5. Sensitizing and mobilizing CSOs and communities on policy and educational content issues, in order to enhance their participation in policy formulation, implementation, monitoring and review at all levels. The targeted groups are members of the Coalition, district assemblies and school governance structures like school management committees and Parents Teacher Associations.

The Coalition is able to have some input during national-level formulation of the budget, because of the reports and analyses it has produced on the education budget over the years.  Once the budget is released, it does a quick analysis and provides simple materials to legislators (for example, in the education sub-committee) to assist them in posing appropriate questions to the government about the budget. 

CSCQBE uses as its framework the EFA goals and the MDGs, together with child rights guarantees in Malawian law and the standards in international treaties that Malawi has ratified.

The Coalition’s strength derives from its 75 members’ speaking with one voice as well as from its evidence-based advocacy.  While it has gained credibility with the government, policy-makers, legislators, the media and the public, it continues to get flak from government on occasion in response to its reports.  Although it finds it relatively easy to get access to government information, other CSOs in the country do not, and access to information remains a challenge for them as Malawi does not have a freedom of information act. 

The Coalition has succeeded in creating greater awareness about education and spending on education in the country.  Recently, the education budget has increased slightly as a share of the overall budget (13%).  Although that still falls considerably short of international standards (26%), it is an increase, which the Coalition sees this increase as, in part, a response to its work.