Mozambique’s president, Filipe Nyusi, said on Friday that the country’s rapid population growth is is among factors holding back the expansion of education services and the increase in quality in the sector.
“Demographic growth affects our ability to expand the supply of school places and reduce the teacher-student ratio,” he said, during a meeting with teachers’ organisations on the occasion of Teachers’ Day, which is being marked on Friday in Mozambique.
The demographic increase and the consequent increase in the student population, the head of state continued, have also made it difficult to properly equip educational institutions and provide adequate professional and living conditions for teachers.
Nyusi noted that Mozambique’s population has jumped from around 9 million in 1975, the year of the country’s independence, to around 32 million today.
He also cited budget limitations, the impact of climate change and the armed conflict in the province of Cabo Delgado, in northern Mozambique, as other factors contributing to holding back better quality education.
“These and other challenges not only affect the future of education services, but also their quality,” he added.
The head of state criticised sectors in society that highlight the poor quality of education without presenting solutions.
“I don’t want to say that everything is fine and never will be at any time or in any country,” he said.
The president reiterated the Frelimo government’s promise to correct the flaws in the implementation of the Single Salary Table (TSU) – a new model for public sector employees’ salaries that is highly contested by teachers and other professional classes.
The president of the United Teachers’ Association (APU), Avatar Cuamba, told Lusa that his members face a “painful” context, such as overcrowded and dilapidated classrooms and low salaries, which make it uninteresting to celebrate their day today.
“It’s painful to work in these conditions,” because “the very way teachers work in the country is not desirable,” he said, on the occasion of Teachers’ Day.
Cuamba said that teachers in Mozambique, especially those in primary and secondary education, are forced to work with classes made up of twice the recommended number of pupils, and there are even cases where there are up to 90 pupils in a class.
“It is stipulated that a general secondary school class should have 45 pupils, but we realise that some of them end up with up to 90 pupils,” he said.
