St Chavara Secondary School, Mponela

St Chavara Secondary School is a secondary school at Mponela, in Dowa district in the Central Region of Malawi. No official register, school website or church source names its proprietor, its admission policy or whether it takes boarders. The name recalls St Kuriakose Elias Chavara (1805–1871), a Syro-Malabar Catholic priest from Kerala, India, who co-founded the Carmelites of Mary Immaculate (CMI), the first religious congregation for men in the Syro-Malabar Church. He opened schools to children regardless of caste and was canonised by Pope Francis in 2014. Secondary education in Malawi runs from Form 1 to Form 4 and ends with the Malawi School Certificate of Education (MSCE), set by the Malawi National Examinations Board (MANEB). Mponela is a trading town about 60 km north of Lilongwe on the M1 road towards Mzuzu. It is primarily an agricultural centre, and its population grew from 9,846 at the 1998 census to 24,543 in 2018. No telephone number, fees or term dates for the school have been published by an official source. Enquiries are best made locally before travelling.

Mponela, Dowa, Malawi
Dowa

13°31′0″S 33°43′14″E