Government backtracks: Increases number of teachers to be recruited

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Government backtracks: Increases number of teachers to be recruited

7:33 CAT | 11 Dec 2017

O País

The Mozambican government has, at the last minute, amended the draft plan and budget for 2018, making it possible to recruit more than twice the number of teachers envisaged in the first draft.

The early draft was distributed some weeks ago and stated that funds were only available to recruit 2,213 new teachers for the 2018 school year. The draft Economic and Social Plan broke this figure down into 1,848 new teachers for primary schools, 165 secondary teachers and 200 teachers for technical and professional education.

Since the number of pupils attending school will inevitably increase in 2018, recruiting such a small number of teachers would mean a deterioration in the pupil/teacher ratio.

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The forecast is that the number of primary school pupils will rise by four per cent (from 6.012 million to 6.254 million) and the number of secondary pupils will increase by seven per cent (from 990,000 to 1.066 million). The government’s own calculation was that the number of pupils per teacher in the first five grades of primary school would rise from 60 to 61.

This caused dismay and considerable outrage. Deputies of the opposition Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM) in the parliamentary Plan and Budget Commission, for example, pointed out “under these conditions, the quality of education will deteriorate, and the number of pupils per teacher will increase. This will completely annul the efforts made in recent years to improve the quality of education and make education a national priority”.

But when, on Monday morning, Prime Minister Carlos Agostinho do Rosario introduced the Plan and Budget at the country’s parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, the figures were changed.

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He promised the recruitment of an additional 3,000 new teachers, bringing the number to 5,213. The money for the extra 3,000 had been found “from reallocating the resources made available from the rationalisation of public expenditure”.

The figure is still considerably less than the 8,000 new teachers who were recruited at the start of the 2017 school year. Nonetheless, Rosario said it would make possible a reduction in the primary school pupil/teacher ratio from 60 to 59.

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The Prime Minister declared that the government will continue to find resources to bring the ratio down to 57 pupils per teacher by 2019 – the figure that is in the government’s five year programme for 2015-2019.

Some of the “rationalisation” of expenditure involves reducing the perks and privileges of high ranking state officials. As announced by Finance Minister Adriano Maleiane last weeks, these cuts could save 7.2 billion meticais (about 120 million US dollars) in a year.

Rent, transport, fuel and communications subsidies for officials are all cut, and an irrational “special bonus” granted to officials merely because they have completed a mid-level or higher education courses, regardless of whether the degree they obtain is of any relevance to their work, has been eliminated.

Source: O País