14 October 2008
Maputo — Despite the efforts undertaken to step up teacher training, the Mozambican Education Ministry simply will not have enough trained teachers available to fill all of next year's teaching vacancies.
The Ministry's national director of human resources, Ivaldo Quincardete, admitted this on Tuesday, when he spoke to AIM at the end of a debate on the norms for hiring teachers, held during a week long national meeting on the Ministry's human resources.
"Considering the information presented today by the provinces, we are going to have a small deficit", said Quincardete, "and very probably we shall have a reduction in the percentage of teachers with educational training".
He acknowledged that, of the 12,000 new teachers needed for the 2009 school year, only 6,902 will be graduated this year from the teacher training institutes. Which means that the "small deficit" could be as large as 5,098.
All those expected to graduate this year will have taken a crash one year teacher training course. 5,840 of them have 10 years of basic education, and the remaining 1,062 have completed secondary education (12th grade). In addition there could be graduates from the Pedagogic University, the degree level teacher training institute. But here Quincardete sounded a note of caution. "It's very difficult to trust in those trained by the Pedagogic University", he said, "because they don't all become teachers. Some do management courses, and even those who do learn to be teachers afterwards work in other areas, where perhaps they get better offers".
This contrasts with Quincardete's optimism on the first day of the human resources meeting, when he told journalists the Ministry hoped that all the teachers recruited next year will have undergone proper training. Reports from provincial officials have put a dampener on that optimism.
The availability of teachers varies from province to province. The southern provinces have no problems, and Maputo has a surplus of trained teachers who can be recruited to work elsewhere.
The situation is at its worst in the central province of Zambezia where a large number of the locally recruited teachers have no training. Zambezia finds itself obliged to hire teachers from Maputo, 1,400 kilometres away.
The Education Ministry now believes that only in 2010 will it be able to hire exclusively teachers with full educational training.
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