New plan to revamp education

An ambitious plan to hire an average of 9,000 new teachers a year in Mozambique is expected to ease the workload of existing educators and improve the quality of education, a senior official told IRIN. "The teachers at the moment are overburdened," Telesfero de Jesus of the ministry of education said. Severe staff shortages meant many teachers had to teach two shifts. "The first shift already has a huge number of pupils - up to 80 pupils in one class. In the afternoon they often have to teach another group of 80 pupils. A teacher cannot give quality education to pupils when he or she is so overstretched," de Jesus explained. In some schools in the capital, Maputo, there are even three shifts at times - the first beginning as early as 6:30, the second at 2 p.m., and the last at around 5 p.m. Since the end of the country's civil war in 1992, during which half the schools were destroyed, authorities in Mozambique have prioritised improving access to education. Government efforts have led to an increase in enrolment figures, although girls still lag behind. However, the number of school-going children has outpaced the growth in the number of teachers, leading to overcrowding in classrooms and a subsequent decline in educational standards. Mozambique needs to recruit 37,100 primary and 7,000 secondary school teachers over the next five years if it is to meet targets laid out in its five-year education programme, aimed at improving the quality of education at all levels by investing in teacher training and school equipment. De Jesus said it was critical to improve the monitoring and evaluation of teachers once they qualified. "The level of their training in college is good, but we need to have better supervision of the teachers in the classrooms," he commented. The curriculum will also be revised to place greater emphasis on technical and professional education, so that education becomes more relevant to the needs of the labour market.