Boosting teacher numbers in Mozambique
14 August 2008
Education is a basic human right but in poor countries the opportunity to get a basic education can be hard to come by. In Mozambique DFID is working to ensure that all children have access to primary school and that once they're in school they get an education that sets them up for the rest of their lives.
A village school
Naera is a rural village 70 kilometres from the nearest city in the country's
populous Zambezia Province. Like most villages in the area Naera has no
electricity and lacks a clean water supply.
The village does have a primary school but with almost 550 pupils and
only two teachers, the challenges involved in providing a decent level of
schooling for all the pupils are immense. For example, in the first year alone
there are 168 children - all of whom have to be registered every morning, which
takes teacher Maria Helena a full 20
minutes.
Hard shift-work
To ensure that all the pupils get at least a few hours of education every day Maria and the headmaster, Raimundo Saimone, break up the school-day into shifts.
The first shift sees classes taught by one teacher between 7:30am and 12:30pm.
In the second shift - which lasts from 12.30 to 5:45pm - they are taught by the
other teacher.
"This has been an uphill struggle," says Maria Helena, taking a class of
92 children, "but this is my vocation in life and I'm dedicated to giving these
children the best education possible under the circumstances."
Soon, the school will be faced with another challenge. Maria is due to give
birth to her first child, meaning that Raimundo will have to teach all the
pupils alone.
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More teachers employed
Unless action is taken to solve the issues holding back Naera and many other Mozambican primary schools - issues such as teacher recruitment and training and insufficient school supplies - the country's education sector will face a serious crisis. Through the Education Sector Support Programme, DFID is collaborating with Mozambique's Government to address these problems.
There are already signs of success. Last year, 11,660 new teachers were recruited, alongside a major infusion of free textbooks to classrooms up and down the country. This gave 270,000 more children the chance of a primary education.
Over the next decade, the Programme will continue to work to get the 1 million
children still out of school into school and to improve classroom conditions
for pupils and teachers alike.
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Facts and stats
- DFID has committed £46 million over a 10-year period (2007-2016) to the Education Sector Support Programme.
- DFID has also contributed around £100,000 to the Commonwealth Education Fund (CEF), which focuses on developing education policy.
- There are around 60,000 primary teachers in Mozambique for the more than 4 million pupils in primary education. This translates as one teacher for every 72 children.
- In Mozambique in 2007, 94% of primary school age children were enrolled in school, compared with over 87% the previous year.
- The number of children in school in Mozambique rose from 44% in 1997 to 88% in 2006.
Links
- How we fight poverty: Education
- DFID's Programme Submission for the Education Sector Support Programme
(351kb)
Commonwealth Education Fund in Mozambique
