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PRIMARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION About 46% of the population of Mozambique is 14 years old or younger, making primary and secondary education a key priority for the country. Mozambique has […]

PRIMARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION

About 46% of the population of Mozambique is 14 years old or younger, making primary and secondary education a key priority for the country. Mozambique has drastically improved primary school enrollment, which has now reached 100%, up from 69% in 2003. However, there are still low school completion rates of around 50% for boys and 40% for girls. In 2012, Mozambique’s public schools had around 5 million students enrolled in grades 1-5, but just 100,000 enrolled in grades 11 and 12. One of the goals of the Ministry of Education is to achieve universal primary education by 2015.

Educational quality, however, still poses a concern for the country. An evaluation of the levels of reading and mathematics of Mozambique’s primary school pupils by the Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ) in 2012 showed that Mozambique is lagging behind in the core areas of reading and mathematics between 2007 and 2011. Teaching methods therefore remain a central issue for future development. Another factor is class sizes. In 2012, there were 63 students for every teacher in grades 1-5 and 33 students per teacher in grades 6 and 7.

Private education still plays a very small role in Mozambique’s primary and secondary education system. In 2012, around 2.8% of Mozambique’s primary and secondary students, or just under 168,000 students, were in private education, compared to around 5.9 million in public education. Technical and vocational education plays an even lesser role. In 2012, Mozambique had 29,645 students enrolled in 88 public technical schools across the country. This compares to the roughly 16,000 primary schools and around 600 secondary schools.

HIGHER EDUCATION

In 2012, Mozambique celebrated 50 years of higher education, and today has 46 higher education institutions. Since student places at this level are limited, candidates have to pass an entrance examination, and competition is stiff. Given that over 300,000 young people enter the labor market annually, the difficulty of responding to the complex needs of this group is likely to be immense, particularly as resources are very scarce. “We have about 30,000 candidates every year, but can only admit about 4,000 of them,” Dr. Orlando Quilambo, Rector of Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM) explained to TBY. Eduardo Mondlane University, founded in 1962, is Mozambique’s oldest and most prestigious institution, and has educated several notable Mozambicans.

In 2012, Mozambique had around 124,000 students enrolled in higher education. Around two-thirds of these were at public and around one third at private universities. At both public and private universities, the majority of students were enrolled in social sciences or humanities programs. However, with the growth in Mozambique’s extractive sector, both education authorities and investors have been complaining of a shortage of science and engineering graduates. As Dr. Quilambo explained to TBY, the problem can be traced back to secondary schools, where “there is not much emphasis on natural sciences. For example, some schools lack microscopes or other equipment. The result is that we do not have many students in engineering or similar subjects.” As a result, the Ministry of Education’s Strategy is to encourage students to pursue science and engineering courses and to open new science and engineering oriented programs. According to Dr. Quilambo, “the Ministry is working on kits to sent around to schools” so that children can have access to scientific equipment. The university is also playing a role, with open days that aim to teach secondary school students about science and engineering and encourage them to pursue these subjects at university.

The second challenge facing the growth of science and engineering programs is capacity at university level. As Dr. Orlando Quilambo explained to TBY in an interview, Mozambique has been “a little bit delayed” in responding to the growth of gas and mining sectors. “Until recently,” says Quilambo, “Eduardo Mondlane was probably the only university that had courses related to mining.” Now, the university is “working on a strategic plan for geo-scientists and engineers to respond to the demand.” One of the ways the university is achieving this is through partnerships with private companies, such as Anadarko, the largest investor in Mozambique’s petroleum sector. Anadarko and UEM are working together to develop a petroleum engineering master’s degree program, which will help prepare more Mozambicans to participate in developing the country’s natural gas reserves. Once the first cohort graduates from the Master’s program in 2015, the university will begin developing an undergraduate level program, although this is still five to ten years from being ready.

UEM is not the only Mozambican university that is looking to work more closely with the energy and mining sectors. The Catholic University of Mozambique (UCM), based in Beira, is also developing its mineralogy programs and looking to open a campus in Pemba to focus on the natural gas industry, according to UCM Rector Father Alberto Ferreira. Fr. Ferreira, in an interview with TBY, stated that, “it is crucially important for Mozambique that we have highly qualified staff who can compete on equal terms with candidates that have been trained somewhere else.” Fr. Ferreira believes that Mozambique’s universities play a fundamental role in meeting that need by “designing educational plans that can match with the developmental priorities of this country.” UCM, founded in 1996 with fewer than 200 students, is now a major player in Mozambique’s higher education system, with over 20,000 enrolled students in 2012. The university was one of the first private institutions in Mozambique and the first to have its headquarters beyond Maputo.

On a policy level, Mozambique intends to allocate 25% of the national budget for education in total public expenditure. The education budget in the National Strategy 2012-2016 defines different sources of financing. The Ministry is engaged in keeping an eye on internal sources financed by tax revenues and direct support, common external sources, including bilateral projects, the contributions of various non-governmental organizations, revenues generated at the level of schools and institutions, and contributions from the private sector and communities (indirect contributions such as the construction and maintenance of classrooms or teacher accommodation). The country will now face the challenge of enlarging the capacities of its educational structure. Additionally, factors such as quality and the precise targeting of programs that feed the demands of the emerging economy will be essential.

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