Maputo — Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi said on Monday that investing in education is not a waste of resources, but a way of assisting the nation to achieve economic growth and progress.
Speaking in Maputo at the opening of a conference on Education of Quality in Mozambique, Nyusi added that education is a force which drives advances in political, cultural, social, economic and technological life.
He stressed the component of quality, declaring that "good quality education and training increase the skills of individuals, help them take better decisions, and contribute to increased productivity and household income'.
Good quality education, Nyusi added, is a fundamental right of all Mozambicans and an important asset for the full exercise of citizenship. It enables individuals to make transformations that are of individual and collective benefit.
Access to education is "a great equalizer', said the President, since it promotes gender and economic equality and facilitates the enjoyment of many other rights, including the right to information.
Nyusi stressed that the literacy rate among adult Mozambicans has risen to 61 per cent, a considerable achievement given that at the time of independence, in 1975, only seven per cent of the population knew how to read and write.
At the starting point of 1975, there were only nine secondary schools in the entire country - now, said Nyusi, there are 2,450. There was just one Mozambican university in 1975 - but now there are 56 institutions of higher education (22 of them publicly owned, and 34 private).
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The government's policy towards higher education, he said, seeks to produce "highly qualified cadres' who can participate actively in the promotion of growth and socio-economic development.
The former vice-chancellor of Maputo's Eduardo Mondlane University, Brazao Mazula, who was the main speaker in one of the conference panels, warned that the current model of secondary education in Mozambique is outdated, and needs deep and urgent changes.
"Faced with the challenges of globalization, and the accelerated pace of digitalization in Mozambique, I would propose that the entire secondary system should be aimed at professionalizing the students', said Mazula. "The industries exploiting gas, coal and other minerals, for example, require specialist skills that are not acquired in the current model of education'.
"It is frustrating that an individual who has spent 12 years studying in the classroom is then rejected by the labour market, because the system did not give him work skills and know-how', he added. "The same can be said of technical and professional education which should include, in its curriculum, some human disciplines, including philosophy and ethics. A technical school without the humanities will produce a good technician - a machine, a robotic professional. That is an education that does not meet the needs of society'.
The Vice-Chancellor of the Pedagogic University of Maputo, Jorge Ferrao, said that the poor quality of some teachers is the result of overcrowded classrooms. Mass entrance into secondary education clashed with the need for quality.
"Even the best teacher in the world could not guarantee quality in a classroom with 70, 80, 100 or even 120 pupils', said Ferrao.
