The president of Camões, the Institute for Cooperation and Language, guaranteed today that the construction of a new building for the Beira Centre of the Mozambican Portuguese School will go ahead as soon as a site has been defined and allocated.
“The project to build the school is underway, what is missing is the space,” said Ana Paula Fernandes, on the sidelines of the inauguration, in Beira, of the exhibition “50 Steps to Freedom: Portugal, from the Dictatorship to 25 April”.
There are bureaucratic issues pending regarding the allocation or indication of a site for the construction of the building, but the project is not forgotten and will be realised as soon as the space is available, the president of Camões assured Lusa.
“Once we have the space, the project will be designed and the cost for its execution [calculated],” said the president of the Institute, speaking to Lusa.
The Beira Portuguese School was set up in 1991 on the initiative of a group of parents who were facing the problem of a minimum quality education in the Portuguese language and culture. However, it still operates today in precarious facilities, currently with 120 students attending from 1st to 9th grade.
Last October, by decree, the Portuguese government created the Beira branch of the Portuguese School of Mozambique – Portuguese Language and Teaching Centre (EPM-CELP), incorporating the current school, which was publicly formalised in December in the presence of the Secretary of State for Education, António Leite.
At the time, António Leite said that the aim was to have a school in the city of Beira like the one at the head office in Maputo, which has 1,621 students, from pre-school to 12th grade, with the construction of a school “from scratch” within three to five years.
“What we have planned at the moment is for the next school year, which starts in September 2024, to begin in facilities that will not yet be definitive facilities, but will be facilities that will have better conditions than these,” said the government official on the occasion.
Lusa
