Mozambique: Niassa school enrolment is down by 15,000 – DW

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

Mozambique: Niassa school enrolment is down by 15,000 – DW

4:21 CAT | 13 Jan 2023

FILE - For illustration purposes only. [File photo: DW]

The attacks in northern Mozambique are affecting enrolments for the 2023 school year. In Niassa, only around 90,000 of the 105,000 enrolments foreseen have taken place. Provincial officials are keeping the process open.

Enrolments for the 2023 school year took place between October 2nd and December 29th, 2022.

The education sector in Niassa province says it has a 15% deficit in its enrolment targets.

Those responsible for education in the province say reasons include the terrorist attacks at the end of 2022 and a general under-valuing of education.

According to the head of the School Planning Department, Omar Orado, three districts did not even achieve half their planned enrolments. Mecula in particular presents a critical situation.

“The highest non-compliance was in the district of Mecula, where we currently have only 45.2% of the enrolment process – not even half,” Orado observes. “In Mecula we heard a lot about the movement [return] of people. But after all that noise, they are not in the schools and the number [of enrolments] is not what we expected.”

Speaking for the director of the District Services for Education, Youth and Technology in Mecula, Luís Buanahaque confirms that insurgent attacks in the region have limited numbers: “Last year, we suffered those terrorist attacks, and the students are on the outskirts. The parents are still in the process of awareness,” he explains.

“We are working with school principals, who must go from house to house to find those children who have not yet enrolled,” Buanahaque adds.

There is still no official note from the ministry on the extension of enrolment, but Omar Orado says that schools will continue to accept enrolments right up until the beginning of the school year.

“What’s the use of closing the doors while [there are still] some kids to enrol?” he asks. “The parents and guardians just say that they took the children to the machambas [cultivation fields] and would return at the beginning of classes. So, if we stop enrolment now, we will suffer for it.”

In addition to terrorism, Luís Buanahaque cites another problem. “Our district does not value education. It is rural education, where parents and guardians only worry when they hear that classes are starting tomorrow,” he complains.

Source: Deutsche Welle