Maputo — Mozambique is short of 12,000 primary and secondary teachers, required for the 2025 school year which is due to begin on Friday.
Announcing this deficit at a Maputo press conference on Tuesday, the government spokesperson, the Minister of State Administration, Inocencio Impissa, said the shortage of teachers "poses a very serious challenge for us'.
The excessive workload and the subsequent payment of overtime have been a source of tension between the government and teachers. Last week, during exam periods, teachers from several schools refused to supervise the exams, demanding long overdue overtime payments.
The newly appointed Minister of Education, Samaria Tovela, who took office on Tuesday, told reporter that she intends to engage in dialogue with teachers to solve the delays in overtime payments.
Despite the current situation, the government has guaranteed that the start of the school year, scheduled for the first week of February, remains on track.
But in parts of the country, particularly in Maputo city and in Nampula province, this looks impossible, since during the December riots several major schools were comprehensively trashed, supposedly in protest against the results of the 9 October general election results.
Classrooms, administrative blocks, and even school libraries were set on fire, because the protestors wanted their favoured candidate, Venancio Mondlane, to be declared the winner.
One bright spot is that this year the Ministry of Education guarantees that school textbooks, printed outside the country, will arrive on time.
In 2024, the books only reached pupils in August, although classes had begun in February. However, the Ministry has guaranteed that this year, schoolbooks will be available both physically and digitally at the beginning of the year.
Impissa could not say exactly how many new teachers will be recruited this year. That is because the key governance documents, such as the new government's five year programme for 2025-2029, have not yet been approved by the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic.
Only when the government documents receive parliamentary approval, "will we have an indication of the number of new teachers we can really recruit this year', said Impissa.
Currently the Mozambican education system employs about 160,000 teachers.