Maputo — Correcting the mistakes detected in primary school textbooks in Mozambique should be concluded this year, so that the books will be available for use in the 2023 school year, according to a report in the Sunday paper "Domingo".
The institutions invited to work on the corrections, including the Eduardo Mondlane University, which is the oldest higher education establishment in the country, began last week to build teams for the task.
The Minister of Education, Carmelita Namashulua, acknowledged that, due to the complexity of the work, it is not yet possible to give an exact date for concluding the corrections.
Last Monday, in her first public reaction after the discovery of the mistakes, especially in the sixth grade Social Science textbook, the minister announced the withdrawal of that book, and a review of all textbooks in use for revision and correction.
This measure is intended to prevent students from assimilating syllabus contents riddled with errors and inaccuracies. For this reason, Namashalua explained, while the correction work is underway, teachers should use theme plans to prepare their lessons.
The spokesman for the Ministry of Education, Feliciano Mahalambe, said the institution is urging teachers to redouble their efforts, as they did in previous years, during the emergencies caused by natural disasters and the Covid-19 pandemic, to avoid the failure of children.
A Commission of Inquiry is investigating how the textbooks came to be written so badly. They contain errors in basic maths, howling mistakes in geography, and ungrammatical Portuguese. Perhaps most serious of all, one of the books praises colonialism for supposedly ending ethnic wars in Africa.
The author of the Social Science book, Firoza Bica, has said nothing about the scandal. Did she really write the book or did somebody else change it? And did nobody proof-read the books before they were sent to the printer? Claims of deliberate sabotage have been made, but have yet to be proved.
The General Director of the National Institute for the Development of Education (INDE), Ismael Nheze, was suspended a week ago, and the National Commission to Assess School Textbooks has been dissolved.
There have been demands that Namashalua herself should be sacked, while her defenders argue that sabotaging the textbooks might have been part of a plot to get rid of her.
