Over the past week, I had a chance to learn more about the education system in Mozambique. I wanted to share a couple of interesting findings that you might be interested to learn about.
-During the civil war (1976-1992), virtually nobody went to school. Immediately after the war ended, there was a huge focus in getting students back into schools. To facilitate this objective, the government offers night classes at many schools for adult education.
-Primary school is free
-Secondary school is less than 25USD per year, but access is the big problem here. In general, there are very few highs schools, especially in rural areas. Many students will need to move to a city to go to high school, which increases the cost multifold.
-There are no textbooks or materials in schools. The only thing students bring to class are a notebook and a pencil
-There is no teacher certification. You can teach any class that you have passed. However, this rule is not always enforced. One volunteer teacher told me that there was a teacher in his school teaching Grade 11 math having only completed grade 10 math!
-The biggest problem facing the school system is corruption. Teachers have almost absolute power over the students and they aren't shy about using it. Several teachers and students have told me that many teachers will demand bribes for good grades: money from male students and sexual favours from female students. When I first heard this, I was completely shocked. I am even more shocked having discovered that this seems to be a pervasive problem and not a worse-case scenario.
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1 comment:
Thanks for the note on education :) I can really see why Fount is going to do teacher education workshops in Uganda, given that there are probably a lot of parallels between the situations in Mozambique post-civil conflict and Uganada post/present-civil conflict.
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