New school year in Mozambique to start with 8.4 million students

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New school year in Mozambique to start with 8.4 million students

1:49 CAT | 10 Jan 2020

in file CoM

The new school year, which starts this month in Mozambique, will see 8.4 million students entering into general education, an increase of 4.7% compared to 2019, the National Institute for Development Education (INDE) announced today.

“The education sector has planned to increase access to the school network with new classrooms. This year, the number of students has grown by 4.7% compared to the previous year,” Director General of INDE Ismael Nheze is quoted by the Mozambique Information Agency as saying.

Of the total of 8,411,201 students enrolled for the new school year, which starts on 31 January, 7,084,217 will take up places in primary education and 1,326,713 in secondary education.

Nheze added that the Ministry of Education expects to hire about 12,000 teachers to respond to the challenges the system faces countrywide this year.

“This figure has been proposed to cater for the expansion of the school network, both to reduce the teacher-pupil ratio in primary schools and to reduce teachers’ workload in secondary education,” he added.

One of the main concerns of the Ministry of Education in Mozambique is the dropout rate resulting from early pregnancy and marriage, especially in rural areas.

According to official figures, in the last five years, around 14,000 female students dropped out of education in Mozambique as a result of early pregnancy and, of this number, 1,081 were prematurely married.

Source: Lusa