Luanda schools turn away 40,000

Students in Angola's capital were supposed to go back to school on Wednesday, but the city's education officials told 40,000 of them to stay home because the public school system could not accommodate them, SAPA reported on Thursday. Some 45,000 students were to enrol in primary and secondary schools in Luanda for the new academic year, but education officials said the city can only accept 5,000 of them.

According to the report, education minister Burity da Silva estimated that his ministry would need US $500 million a year to build new schools to keep up with demand. With the nation's economy in tatters after 26 years of civil war, Da Silva said in a message to teachers and students on Tuesday that the government did not have enough money to fund his request.

Luanda alone would need 1,099 new classrooms to accommodate all the potential primary and secondary school students, said Andre Soma, the city's education chief. The classroom shortage has left the city's impoverished residents scrambling to scrape together the fees to put their children in private schools. About 100,000 students in Luanda attend private school, but the cost is crippling for most residents here. Tuition begins at about US $300 a year, plus US $100 monthly fees - far more than many workers make. Public employees, for example, earn a minimum wage of US $50 a month.