Mozambique: Exam fees also to cover teachers’ logistics – O País

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Mozambique: Exam fees also to cover teachers’ logistics – O País

3:14 CAT | 15 Nov 2022

Image: O País

The exam fee for students in Grades 10 and 12 is to be used to pay for food and transportation for teachers involved in the process. The amount in question was increased from 30 and 50 to 300 meticais.

Students in Grades 10 and 12 must pay a fee to take the final exams. In Matola, in Maputo province, the fee is 300 meticais, against the 30 and 50 that students paid before the pandemic.

“With the outbreak of Covid-19, we had to resize exam groups, increasing the number of exam centres, and began to need many more people involved in the process,” recalls José Luís, spokesman for the Provincial Directorate of Education in Maputo.

For example, “the district of Matola has a higher population density and number of students, which is why it needs teachers from Marracuene and Boane to support the examination process, and it is in this way that the fees had to rise”, he comments.

Of the money that exams cost Matola municipality, the Provincial Directorate of Education in Maputo pays only half, and the remainder comes from fees paid by students.

“The city of Matola needs, just for Primary Education, about 22 million meticais for this process, and the Secondary needs close to 20 million meticais and, until now, without charging the exam fee, we have 50% for Primary and a deficit of 18 million meticais for Secondary. This exam fee will support the desired outcome,” José Luís says.

Necessities include the purchase of computer material and logistics for the teachers involved in the exams.

“These amounts are important for the acquisition of computer equipment (office material to be more comprehensive), food and transport for teachers, because, for example, in the case of Matola, it needs teachers who come from Boane and Marracuene. It will also be important for the acquisition of hygiene material and other aspects inherent to this process,” Luis added.

José Luís does not clarify the legal basis for increasing the exam fees by more than 1000%, only mentioning a regulation which explains the exercise that is carried out in the process of the final exams.

“We have a regulation for the organisation of the exams process which foresees a series of activities, administrative processes, even pedagogic ones, for the accomplishment of the exams. It is in this document that all the procedures for exams are outlined, as well as the needs for this same realisation, but also in other instruments of the National Education System, which we use to set this amount,” he explains.

But each district is free to set the exam fee according to its needs, he notes in conclusion.

Source: O País