Education Sector Strategic Plan 1999-2003 - Reviving Schools And Expanding Opportunities

Education Sector Strategic Plan 1999-2003 - Reviving Schools And Expanding Opportunities - Mozambique

The Plano Estratégico de Educação is the product of an extensive and continuing process of consultation. It lays out the Government’s vision for the future of Mozambique’s education system, and identifies the main lines of action that the Government will pursue in the short and medium term in order to realise this vision. It defines the Government’s priorities within the education sector, and provides a framework for decisions about the allocation of domestic resources and external assistance.

The Plano Estratégico de Educação is rooted in a vision of an education system more responsive to the needs and expectations of Mozambican citizens, and more closely adapted to the requirements of the Mozambican economy. The core values that inform the vision are inclusion and participation. The Government’s first priority is increased access to educational opportunities, at all levels of the education system. The central goal is accelerated progress toward universal primary schooling, with particular emphasis on increasing enrolments among girls. Accomplishing this goal will require the participation of all Mozambicans—parents, communities, employers, NGOs, religious organisations—and from the Government’s international partners as well. In the future the Mozambican educational system will comprise a diverse array of institutions—public and private, formal and non-formal—supported by contributions from and governed in collaboration with stakeholders. This implies a new vision of the Ministry of Education’s role, and greatly expanded roles for other actors as they assume a greater share of responsibility in the system.

The Plano Estratégico de Educação also represents the Government’s response to the pressures and opportunities that face the country in an increasingly integrated and competitive global economy. The immediate context for these challenges in Mozambique is rapid economic integration in southern Africa, under the auspices of SADC. Improving the quality of education that Mozambican citizens receive and providing them with the knowledge and skills that they will need to compete in the global economy is urgently important if they are to keep up with their regional neighbours and ensure sustainable livelihoods for themselves and their children.

The Plano Estratégico de Educação proposes three main objectives for the education system. The first among these is to increase access to educational opportunities at all levels of the education system, for all Mozambicans. The second objective is to maintain and improve the quality of education, while the third is to develop an institutional and financial framework that will sustain

Mozambican schools and students into the future. The Government’s strategy seeks to minimise the trade-offs among these three objectives, while assigning the highest priority to accelerated progress toward universal primary schooling. Successful implementation of the strategy will require close Cupertino between the Ministry of Education and the full range of stakeholders in the education system, including parents, local communities, employers, NGOs, and religious organisations, all of whom will be called upon to assume significantly larger roles in educational finance and governance. It will also require continued financial support from the Mozambique’s international partners in the education sector.

In the past decade the Government of Mozambique has pursued a program of structural adjustment and macro-economic stabilisation, in concert with polices aimed at strengthening the institutions of a market economy. The fundamental objective of these economic reforms has been to foster economic growth and reduce poverty. The development of human resources has been and remains a key element in the Government’s strategy, for two reasons. First, the availability of qualified workers is an essential condition for institutional development in the public and private sectors and a prerequisite for increased efficiency and improved performance in all sectors of the economy. Second, expanding access to educational opportunities contributes directly to reducing poverty and increasing social equity. Expanding opportunities for girls and women is especially important, as women are often the principal breadwinners for their families and the benefits of their education are passed on to their children. To advance the goal of human capital development, the Government has been consistent in its support for continued development in the social sectors, and especially in the education system.

The Government’s economic policies have borne fruit in the past several years, as the economy has stabilised and growth has resumed, but Mozambique nevertheless remains among the world’s poorest countries. Per capita incomes remain extremely low, illiteracy remains common, and disease and malnutrition remain widespread. In addition, Mozambique remains highly dependent on external assistance, including both financial and human resources. The Government consequently aims to maintain its present economic strategy in the short and medium terms, in order to further reduce poverty and establish a solid basis for continued efforts to resolve the structural problems that now afflict the country.

In the recent past the Government’s fiscal and monetary policies have had as their fundamental goals the reduction of inflation and the strengthening of Mozambique’s international reserves. Fiscal policies have therefore been restrictive, as the Government has sought to reduce its fiscal deficit as a proportion of GDP. The Government’s recurrent budget has been in surplus since 1995. As a percentage of GDP, the global deficit before grants declined by 12.7 percent between 1994 and 1996, while the deficit including grants declined by 3 percent during the same period.

Achieving these goals required strict limitations on public expenditures, in order to bring them into line with the Government’s revenues. Despite these constraints, and despite the obstacles imposed by competing obligations including debt service, the Government has struggled to maintain its support for the social sectors, and especially for education. The share of public expenditure devoted to education declined from 14.3 to 9.6 percent between 1991 and 1994, while Government expenditure as a share of GDP remained constant. In the years since, however, Government expenditure as a percentage of GDP has fallen from 22.9 to 16.1 percent, while the share of public expenditure going to education has increased significantly.

This is also true with respect to investments. The share of public investment assigned to the education sector has nearly doubled since 1990, from 4.8 to 9.1 percent.

In the short term, the Government’s restrictive fiscal policies will be sustained, which means that the capacity to increase public expenditure will depend on raising additional tax revenue. To this end, the Government is preparing to implement fiscal and customs reforms including the reorganisation and modernisation of the customs and tax collection bureau’s. In comparison with other countries in southern Africa taxes in Mozambique constitute a relatively small share of GDP, which suggests that the Government has some scope for raising additional tax revenue. In countries including United Republic of Tanzania, Mauritius, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Swaziland the share of tax revenues in GDP varies between 15 and 33.2 percent, while in Mozambique tax revenues represent 17.6 percent of GDP. In addition to improving tax collection, of course, the Government will seek to increase public revenues by pursuing economic policies that foster economic growth and so increase the tax base.

The rate of inflation and the exchange rate of the metical since 1996 demonstrate the increasing stability of the Mozambican economy. At the end of 1996 the accumulated annual inflation rate was 16.6 percent, as opposed to 54.1 percent in the preceding year. In 1997 inflation continued to decline. At the end of November 1997 the accumulated rate of inflation was only 4.3 percent, as compared with 16.3 percent in the same period of 1996. The Government’s target for inflation in 1997 was 14 percent.

The exchange rate has also stabilised significantly in the past two years. The value of the metical declined by only 6 percent in 1996 and by only 0.6 percent in the four months to April 1997, as opposed to 2.6 percent in the first four months of 1996.

GDP growth has averaged 5.9 percent over the past five years. Important constituents of this growth have included the recovery of food production, which has reduced the need to devote scarce foreign reserves to imports, and growth in merchandise exports, which increased by nearly 30 percent in 1996 in comparison with the preceding year.

As was noted above, despite recent progress Mozambique remains one of the poorest countries in the world, and the country faces severe structural social and economic problems. The central goal of the Government’s long-term development strategy is poverty reduction through labour-intensive economic growth, in an environment of peace, stability, and national unity. The highest priority is assigned to reducing poverty in rural areas, where 90 percent of poor Mozambicans live, but urban poverty is also a target. To achieve the goal of poverty reduction, the Government has committed itself to four main objectives: a) the rehabilitation of key infrastructure; b) the restoration of agricultural production; c) the creation of an enabling environment for private investment; and d) the development of human resources.

In rural areas, the Government’s strategy for increasing incomes focuses on the liberalisation of agricultural markets and investment in rural infrastructure, with a particular focus on expanding and upgrading the rural road network. These initiatives are expected to open up new opportunities for rural producers to market their output, and increase incomes. They are also expected to increase rural non-farm employment, both directly through the implementation of labour- intensive rural infrastructure projects and indirectly through the new opportunities and demands generated by rising rural incomes.

In urban areas, the Government’s strategy focuses on the simplification of current tax and regulatory regimes, the liberalisation of labour markets, and the provision of credit for small enterprises and micro-entrepreneurs. The goal is to foster an enabling environment for private sector initiatives, to expand entrepreneurial and employment opportunities in Mozambique’s cities, and thus to increase the incomes of the urban poor. In the long run the strategy foresees a move into small and large-scale labour-intensive manufacturing industries.

In the short term, the Government has identified four key lines of action: a) macroeconomic policies to hold inflation at one digit and correct structural imbalances; b) redistributive policies to promote social equity; c) policies to strengthen public administration; and d) policies to promote growth in private sector investment.

Expansion and improvement in the education system are critically important elements of the Government’s development strategy, in both long-term and short- term perspectives. In the long term, universal access to education of acceptable quality is essential for the development of Mozambique’s human resources and the growth of the Mozambican economy. The success of the Government’s move to encourage labour-intensive growth will depend to a significant extent on the education and training of the labour force. In the short term, increased access and improved quality in basic education are powerful mechanisms for redistribution and the promotion of social equity, as they enhance the opportunities available to girls and to children from disadvantaged regions. In recognition of the key contributions that the education system can make to poverty reduction and economic development, the Government has strongly increased the share of the recurrent budget allocated to education in the past three years, and has made the education sector the second largest recipient of public investment funds, after roads.

In 1995, within the context of its overall development strategy, the Government adopted the Política Nacional de Educação, which established the policy framework for the national education system. The Política Nacional de Educação identifies the Government’s main aims for the education system as a whole, and defines specific policies for every sector within the system. Acknowledging the many urgent educational needs that remain unsatisfied in Mozambique, the Government nevertheless recognised that the scarcity of financial and human resources would not allow all of these needs to be addressed at once. The Política Nacional de Educação therefore identified basic education and adult literacy as “the topmost priority of the Government.”

In developing its own Plano Estratégico de Educação the Ministry of Education has affirmed the priorities identified in the Política Nacional de Educação, assigning special importance to increasing basic educational opportunities for Mozambican children. The Plano Estratégico de Educação defines the Ministry’s fundamental objectives for the basic education system, and identifies the means by which the Ministry - acting in concert with domestic stakeholders and international partners - will move to accomplish them. The central objective of the strategy is universal access to basic education for all Mozambican children. Additional objectives include improvements in the quality of basic education and the establishment of a sustainable, flexible, and decentralised system in which responsibility is widely shared with those who work in the system and those whom it serves. The ultimate goal of the Plano Estratégico de Educação is to support the Government’s national development strategy by building an educational system that provides Mozambican citizens with the knowledge and skills that they will need to obtain sustainable livelihoods, accelerate the growth of the economy, and strengthen the institutions of a democratic society.

The Ministry’s strategy has been developed through a process of broad consultation. Continued consultation with stakeholders and encouragement of widespread participation in implementation will be essential determinants of the strategy’s success. In the final analysis, however, the key to the implementation of the Plano Estratégico de Educação is the acknowledgement by the Government of its limited fiscal and administrative capacity, and the corresponding acceptance by its domestic and international partners of shared responsibility for achieving the strategy’s main goals. The Ministry remains responsible for setting policy and for guiding and co-ordinating the actions of its many partners, but successful implementation depends on the willingness of these partners to cooperate with the Ministry and with one another in the implementation process.

A number of the Government’s most important external partners including ASDI, CIDA, DANIDA, FINNIDA, Ireland, DFID, the Netherlands, and the World Bank have expressed their willingness to shift their assistance toward program support for the implementation of the Plano Estratégico de Educação, with a corresponding move away from support for individual projects and the proliferation of administrative structures. In order to ensure the broadest possible co-operation among external donors to education, the Ministry will convene a small group representing the major financial and technical agencies involved in the sector to provide leadership and facilitate co-ordination in the implementation of the Ministry’s strategy.

The present document defines the main elements of the Government’s strategy. In keeping with the priorities identified in the Política Nacional de Educação, the focus in the first sections of the document is on basic education, and on the Government’s strategy for expanding access and improving quality in primary schools. The concluding sections of the document review the strategies outlined in the Política Nacional de Educação for the expansion of access and the improvement of educational quality at other levels of the Sistema Nacional de Educação (SNE).

There are three fundamental problems in the Mozambican education system, which affect all levels of the system and virtually all institutions at each level.

The first is limited access to educational opportunities, the second is poor quality, and the third is the cost of expanding access and improving quality. Access to educational opportunities is extremely limited in secondary and tertiary institutions, and in technical and professional schools as well, especially for girls and young women. The quality of education and training provided in these institutions is often poor. The strategy developed in this document assigns the highest priority to expansion and improvement in the basic education system, but it is urgently important for the Government’s domestic and external partners to recognise that assistance will continue to be needed at all levels of the education system, as a coherent and integrated body.

Virtually universal access to primary schooling was achieved shortly after Independence. In 1981, the gross enrollment rate in EP1 reached 110 percent. In the years following, however, economic crisis and civil war steadily reduced the rate of enrolment, which fell to 54 percent in 1994. The gross enrolment rate in EP1 has since recovered, to 79 percent in 1998, which exceeds the rate in 1991 but remains well below the rate achieved in 1981. In 1998 there are 6.114 schools for EP1 (many of which in fact offer fewer than five grades), but only 378 schools for EP2. As a result, relatively few children (and very few rural children) are able to complete primary education. Over time, the Ministry plans to unify the two levels of basic education and increase the number of schools providing all seven primary grades.

Girls are less likely than boys to enrol and to persist in school at all levels of the education system, but their disadvantage emerges and is confirmed in the first years of schooling. Among children enrolling in the first grade, 44 percent are girls, but girls represent only 39 percent of those who arrive in the fifth grade, and an even smaller percentage of those who make the transition to EP2. Girls’ access to schooling is even more restricted in the central and northern provinces, where girls on average represent only 37 percent of students in EP1. One possible explanation for the relatively low participation rate of girls is the scarcity of female teachers. In EP1 and EP2, only 23 percent of teachers are women.

Opportunities are even more restricted at higher levels of the system, and in technical/ professional schools, although enrolments have increased rapidly in recent years. In 1995 there were approximately 32,000 students enrolled in the first cycle of secondary education (ESG1), and only 4,000 enrolled in the second cycle (ESG2). In 1998 there were more than 53,000 in ESG1, and more than 7,300 in ESG2. Only about one third of students in secondary schools are girls. Approximately 9,000 students are enrolled in post-secondary institutions. Total enrolments in all three levels of technical schooling (elementary, basic, and mid-level) amount to barely 17.000 students, up from 14,000 in 1995. Approximately 60 percent of students in Commercial courses are female, but the percentage of young women in Industrial and Agricultural courses is very low.

The second problem is poor quality. Parents do not simply want places in schools for their children. They want to be sure that their children learn something once they are enrolled. Current demands for access to schooling will only be sustained if the quality of education provided improves over time.

Even at currently low levels of enrolment, the quality of education in most schools remains unsatisfactory. In EP1 the average pupil’s/teacher ratio is 61:1, but in some provinces it is far higher (e.g., 81:1 in Gaza); in EP2 the average pupil/teacher ratio is 41:1. Most primary school students attend school on double shifts, and in urban and peri-urban areas triple shifts are common. Basic learning materials are scarce or absent in many schools. The quality of educational facilities is often poor. Libraries and laboratories in secondary schools are badly underequipped and out of date, where they exist at all, and the equipment available for training in technical/professional schools is commonly in disrepair and inappropriate for teaching skills currently in demand in the labour market.

Teachers at all levels are often underqualified for the posts they hold. Nearly a quarter of all teachers in EP1 are entirely untrained, and a majority has received only six years of schooling and one year of professional training. Limited capacity for pre-service teacher training presents a serious obstacle to the expansion of enrolments in primary and secondary schools, and opportunities for in-service training remain few. Management capacity is weak at all levels of the education system, from the Ministry of Education to the school.

The structure and content of the curriculum in primary and secondary schools are increasingly inappropriate to rapidly changing economic and social demands. The present curriculum framework is rigidly prescriptive, allowing few opportunities for regional or local adaptation. Much of what is taught in primary schools is of doubtful relevance or practical utility, despite the fact that the vast majority of students end their schooling at this level. In EP2 the curriculum is organised around multiple disciplines, with a separate teacher for each, which increases costs and obstructs the expansion of enrolments at this level. At the secondary level the curriculum is particularly weak in the areas of science and mathematics, in significant part because of teachers’ lack of access to essential equipment and instructional technology.

The internal efficiency of the educational system is very low, and especially so for girls, as the declining percentage of female enrolments at higher levels of the system makes clear. In EP1 rates of repetition and drop-out average 25 and 15 percent, respectively, at each grade level. As a result, barely 25 percent of students who enter the first grade successfully complete the five grades of EP1 without repetition. Transition rates to EP2 are also low, which means that only 6 of every 100 students who begin school will graduate from EP2. Repetition and drop-out rates remain high in secondary schools, but transition rates are higher because so few students successfully complete their studies at this level. Graduation rates at UEM are extremely low when compared to the numbers of students enrolled in particular programs.

The third problem is that the cost of significant expansion and improvement in the educational system is neither affordable nor sustainable within the present budget of the education sector. Maintaining the current system, with all of its problems, is beyond the means of the Ministry, and a significant share of the annual budget is consequently paid for with funds provided from abroad. Under these circumstances, expanding access and improving quality in response to the increasing demands of Mozambican citizens will not be possible unless other actors including stakeholders and representatives of civil society are willing to assume a considerably greater share of responsibility in the finance and governance of the educational system.

The many problems in the Mozambican education system have deep roots, and a long history. They cannot be resolved overnight. The present moment nevertheless represents an especially favourable opportunity to launch a concerted effort to bring about dramatic improvements, for five main reasons. The conjunction of these five factors means that objectives that would have seemed hopelessly unrealistic even two years ago are now well within the realm of possibility. The Plano Estratégico de Educação is an ambitious but nevertheless realistic response to these new possibilities.

After more than a decade of stagnation the Mozambican economy is now growing strongly, at approximately 7 percent per year, over the last six years. This means more revenue for the Government, and larger incomes for Mozambican citizens, which in turn increase capacity for both public and private investment in education. Macroeconomic trends are also favourable, as inflation has been significantly reduced and the value of the metical has been stabilised. Current projections suggest that present growth rates can be sustained in the short and medium terms, as foreign and domestic investment increases and major projects in the transportation and energy sectors begin to show results. Sustained growth in the economy will produce additional tax revenues and so support the implementation of the Government’s education strategy.

The obligations imposed by debt service pose a huge obstacle to increased expenditure in education and other social sectors in Mozambique, as even the IMF and the World Bank have come to recognize. Debt service currently takes approximately 30 percent of the Government’s annual recurrent budget. Mozambique has recently been declared eligible for debt relief under the HIPC initiative, which should free significant new revenues for investments in the social sectors (including education) that can be used to improve the welfare and expand the opportunities of Mozambican citizens. These new revenues will help to ensure that the costs associated with the implementation of the Plano Estratégico de Educação can be sustained.

In the years since the elections in 1994 the Government has made great progress toward its goal of peace, stability, and national unity. Democratic institutions and practices are increasingly well-established at the national level, and popular participation in democratic political activities is accelerating. The recently held local elections have resulted in the establishment of legitimate and responsive local governments in many parts of the country, which will strengthen institutional capacity for decentralisation. Citizens and interest groups have intensified their demands and expectations for expanded and improved public services, and local communities and other agencies (e.g., NGOs, religious organisations) have demonstrated a growing capacity and willingness to accept a larger share of administrative and financial responsibility for local institutions, including schools. These developments establish a solid foundation for partnerships between the Ministry of Education and a variety of stakeholders and representatives of civil society in the effort to expand access and improve quality in the educational system.

Strong partnerships with domestic stakeholders are essential to the success of the Government’s strategy. The Ministry of Education has already taken steps to build these partnerships. These include encouragement for the establishment of school councils including parents and other local stakeholders to participate in the governance of individual schools, and encouragement for the expansion of private-sector initiatives at all levels of the educational system. Further steps to increase consultation and democratic participation in educational governance are integral components of the Plano Estratégico de Educação.

In response to the demands of the economy for increased investment in human resources and the expectations of Mozambican citizens for greater educational opportunities, the Government has made expansion and improvement in basic education a central element in its development strategy. Universal access to educational opportunities of acceptable quality is critically important for achieving the Government’s core objective of poverty reduction, as enhancing the skills and training of Mozambican workers will expand their access to sustainable livelihoods. Investment in education can contribute to the achievement of other objectives as well, including increased social and gender equity and encouragement for domestic and international private investment.

The Government has made it clear that it takes its commitment to enhanced educational opportunities seriously by rapidly increasing the share of public expenditure that goes to education, from less than 10 percent in 1994 to 18 percent in 1997. Education is now the single largest category of recurrent expenditure, and the second largest category of investment expenditure, after roads. Increasing the salaries of civil servants including teachers is among the Government’s short term priorities. This will further increase the share of public resources devoted to education, because a majority of public sector workers are teachers. With sustained economic growth, reduced debt service obligations, and improved revenue generation (e.g., through the introduction of VAT) the resources available for education should continue to increase steadily in the coming decade. If the share of the Government’s budget allocated to education were to rise further, to the levels prevailing in neighbouring countries (i.e., 21-22 percent), the rate of increase would be even faster.

The Special Initiative for Africa marks a commitment by the UN system and other major international co-operation partners to mobilise additional resources in order to significantly accelerate development and reduce poverty in African countries. Within the Special Initiative the largest share of funds (approximately two-thirds of the total) is to be committed to basic education, with the aim of ensuring access to primary schooling for all African children in the next decade. This corresponds to the first priority of the Plano Estratégico de Educação. Additional external support mobilised under the auspices of the Special Initiative for Africa can help to accelerate achievement of the goal of universal primary schooling in Mozambique.

Rapid progress toward universal primary schooling is the central goal of the Plano Estratégico de Educação. The right to education for all Mozambicans is inscribed in the Constitution, and the goal of universal basic education was affirmed by the Government in 1990, at the World Conference on Education for All in Jomtien. The Government will devote every effort to making this right a reality in the first decade of the new millennium.

Universal access to primary school is of fundamental importance for the Government’s development strategy, for four main reasons. First, providing basic education for all is a central element in the Government’s strategy for poverty reduction, as the acquisition of basic academic skills including literacy will expand the access of Mozambican citizens to employment opportunities and sustainable livelihoods. Second, the development of Mozambique’s human resources is essential if the country’s economic growth is to be sustained. Success in an increasingly integrated and technologically demanding global economy requires continuous improvement in the skills and qualifications of the labour force, which in turn requires continuous expansion and improvement in the educational system. Third, universal access to primary school is the surest strategy for increasing equity in the educational system. Ensuring that all children are able to enrol in school opens up new opportunities for previously disadvantaged children, including girls, children with special needs, and children from provinces and districts where access has been up to now limited. Fourth, education is necessary for the effective exercise of citizenship, and an informed and critical population is essential for the protection and reinforcement of democratic institutions. Achieving universal primary enrolment in the next decade will require the mobilisation of resources from a wide variety of domestic and external sources, but the Government is confident that the goal can be achieved.

The central objective of the Government’s strategy is to ensure that all Mozambican children have the opportunity to enrol in school, which will require the construction of large numbers of new schools and classrooms. This task is complicated by rapid growth in the school-aged population, estimated at 3.7 percent per year. Accommodating all of these additional children will require the provision on average of approximately 1500 new EP1 and EP2 classrooms each year, between 1998 and 2003. Expansion on this scale will also require the recruitment and training of large numbers of new teachers, as is discussed in a subsequent section.

In this construction program, the highest priority will be assigned to providing schools in regions and communities where children now lack effective access. The Ministry of Education will undertake a school mapping exercise in order to ensure that new schools are built where they are most needed. Inappropriate or inadequate building standards may represent a particular obstacle to the enrolment and persistence of girls in school, so the Ministry will seek to ensure that new schools and classrooms are built with attention to the special needs of girls. Local leaders and educators will encourage households and communities to enrol their sons and daughters in school in the year they reach the age of 6, the official admission age.

The Government assigns particular importance to increasing female enrolment at all levels of the educational system, as most of the children who do not now enrol in school are girls. The Ministry therefore proposes to increase the representation of girls in EP1 by 2 percent per year between now and 2001, with a particular focus on the Northern and Central regions where female enrolments are currently lowest. Encouraging the enrolment and persistence of girls in school may require a variety of policy shifts, including expanded recruitment of female staff, revision of curricula, modification of school construction standards (see above), and the provision of targeted financial support for female students in areas or on courses (e.g., agriculture) where they are severely underrepresented. More generally, it will require the systematic incorporation of gender issues into the Ministry’s planning process, and the collection, analysis, and publication of educational data desegregated by sex.

The lack of female teachers has been identified as one of the main causes of low enrolment among girls, with some districts employing no female teachers at all. This shortage is in turn partly attributable to the social problems that young women may encounter when assigned to schools in unfamiliar areas. The Ministry will therefore expand the recruitment and training of female teachers, and will simultaneously seek to minimise the problems that they face on the job by for example allowing young women to teach in their home areas or assigning female teachers to schools in pairs. The Ministry will also take immediate steps to increase the representation of women among school directors, teacher trainers, provincial and district administrative staff, and in the Ministry itself. In secondary schools the Ministry will encourage the employment of matrons for boarding facilities.

In the curriculum development process that is now underway, MINED will ensure that curricula and learning materials are adapted to the learning needs of girls, and that they reflect the diverse roles that women play in Mozambican society. Curricula in training programs for teachers and administrators will also be revised to include attention to gender issues and the specific problems that girls and young women encounter in schools.

In addition, MINED will conduct studies in different regions of the country to investigate the gender constraints that make girls less likely than boys to enrol or persist in school. The Ministry will develop policy responses based on the findings of these studies, including support for provincial and district officials as they devise strategies to overcome the social and cultural obstacles that girls and young women face in particular regions. At the national level the Ministry of Education will develop policies that support the continued education of pregnant students, and strengthen enforcement of its current policies barring the sexual harassment and abuse of female students and teachers.

The MINED is currently developing policies to increase the internal efficiency of primary schools, in association with the continuing process of curriculum reform. Reducing currently high rates of failure, repetition, and dropout will improve learning outcomes for many students, and free resources currently lost to “wastage” in schools for more productive uses. Reducing repetition rates also frees the school places now occupied by repeaters for new students, thus making way for a substantial increase in enrolments at virtually no additional cost. Estimates included in the Financial Plan suggest that improving the efficiency of the system is the single best use of scarce financial resources in the education sector. Reducing the dropout rate among girls in the upper grades of EP1 and in the transition to EP2 is especially important, as this is the point at which disparities in enrolment rates between girls and boys are most powerfully established. Among the possibilities under consideration are the introduction of automatic promotion in primary schools and the establishment of multi-year learning cycles in order to reduce the salience of annual evaluation and promotion.

In addition to providing initial access to schools, the Ministry will encourage the expansion of existing EP1 schools to include Grades 6 and 7. This will require not only the construction of additional classrooms but also a significant revision of the curriculum in EP2 to bring it into closer integration with the curriculum in EP1. Revising the EP2 curriculum to reduce the number of independent subjects will also reduce the number of new teachers needed at this level as enrolments rise. The opportunity to complete primary school close to home should reduce drop-out rates and increase the rate of transition from EP1 to EP2, especially for girls.

An additional factor determining the feasible pace of expansion in the educational system is the cost of constructing schools and classrooms, which has in the past varied widely across projects and across funding agencies, from less than USD$5000 to more than USD$45,000 per classroom. Pilot projects under the auspices of various agencies provide valuable examples of schools and classrooms constructed at significantly reduced cost. MINED is now in the process of developing and implementing low-cost models of classroom construction for all regions of Mozambique, and planning national consultations on different models and possible variation across regions. Based on the outcomes of this seminar, the Ministry will encourage the various agencies participating in classroom construction to adopt standard low-cost and good quality models so as to maximise the number of classrooms they are able to construct. The Ministry will also encourage these agencies to rely to the greatest possible extent on local materials and local labour in school construction, so as to generate employment and maximise the impact of construction projects on local economies, and will develop administrative and financial procedures to provide funds and materials to communities that seek to construct their own schools and classrooms.

Increasing access will necessarily involve the construction and management of schools by actors other than the Ministry of Education. As MINED’s capacity to meet the social demand for education and training remains limited, the contributions that these agencies can make are urgently important. Through tax incentives and other mechanisms the Government will encourage religious organisations, NGOs, entrepreneurs, and employers to expand their own provision of educational facilities and opportunities. For example, NGOs can play an especially important role in the provision of adult and non-formal education, while employers can make valuable contributions in providing opportunities and support for technical and post-secondary education. The Ministry will also continue to support the establishment and expansion of private schools, especially in areas not sufficiently served by public institutions. Private providers can also play an important role in expanding national capacity at the secondary and post-secondary levels of the education system.

The main constraint on the expansion of primary school enrolments is the supply of teachers. The current output of trained teachers graduating from teacher training institutions is approximately 1360 per year, which is expected to rise to approximately 2200 per year with the opening of new IMAPs in additional provinces. Continued progress toward the Ministry’s goal of universal access to primary schooling will require far larger numbers of new teachers, which is clearly beyond the capacity of the teacher training system as it is now organised. The Ministry anticipates a cumulative shortage of approximately 8,000 teachers in 2001 The Ministry has undertaken a study of the teacher training system aimed at measuring the potential capacity of the system and at developing strategies for significantly increasing the system’s output.

The rapid expansion of enrolments in the years immediately after Independence was accomplished in significant part by recruiting large numbers of underqualified teachers, some with as little as four years of primary schooling. The Ministry is unwilling to accept further deterioration in educational quality as the price of increased enrolments, but significant gains in enrolments are clearly not attainable without a major expansion in the capacity of the teacher training system and the introduction of innovative instructional strategies in primary schools. Of necessity, this will have to be achieved through the revision of curricula and the intensification of production in all teacher training institutions, supplemented by increased provision of in-service training and instructional support services for new teachers.

The Ministry is now developing accelerated training programs for IMAPs, so that new teachers can complete their pre-service training in 12 months and quickly assume teaching positions in schools. The goal is to move to a 10+1+1 model, in which prospective teachers who have completed ten years of schooling will be provided with one year of intensive pre-service training, followed by a year of supervised practice accompanied by in-service training and support. The pre- service year will focus on mastery of curriculum content and classroom “survival skills,” while the in-service year will focus on the refinement of pedagogical practice and work with parents and other community constituencies.

In all but the very long term, however, the IMAPs will not be able to produce enough new teachers to accommodate the planned increase in enrolments. The CFPPs will therefore continue to recruit candidates with seven years of schooling, and to provide them with a somewhat more extensive pre-service training program in order to equip them for teaching positions. The Ministry will explore ways in which the CFPP curriculum can be revised to accelerate the production of new teachers and shift a greater share of their preparation to in- service work at the school site. Until all of the IMAPs are fully on-stream, the Ministry will also continue recruiting new teachers with ten years of schooling and no professional training. Most of these teachers receive some brief professional orientation before they enter the classroom, and subsequent in- service training in both residential and distance programs. MINED will provide supervision, pedagogical support, and continuing in-service training on a priority basis for new teachers. Over time the Ministry will seek to ensure that all teachers in primary schools have at least 10 years of schooling and full professional training, but it is clear that this goal will be achieved only in the very long term.

As an additional response to the shortage of teachers, double (and sometimes triple) shifts will unfortunately continue in most primary schools, as will relatively high pupil/teacher ratios. To ameliorate these problems, the Ministry of Education will ensure that all pre-service and in-service training programs for teachers provide them with skills and techniques that will enable them to work effectively with large classes. MINED will also explore the possibility of introducing alternative organisational models including multi-grade classrooms in some schools.

Another potential constraint on the expansion of primary school enrolments is the recurrent cost of expansion, the main component of which is teachers’ salaries. The Government recognises that the current salaries and conditions of work of public sector employees are not conducive to high morale or effective performance, and is therefore working with its international partners to develop a strategy to improve their wages, benefits, and working conditions. This effort will benefit teachers as well as other public sector workers. At the same time, the Government will seek to provide teachers with access to alternative forms of compensation (e.g., opportunities for promotion, housing, community support) so as to restrain growth in the wage bill. MINED will also take steps to minimise the particular obstacles faced by female teachers, in order to increase the recruitment and retention of women in the teaching profession.

Improvements in teachers’ conditions of service is essential in order to attract better-qualified teachers, increase their time for class preparation and teaching, and reduce their dependence on second jobs and “unofficial” sources of additional income. In addition, of course, improving teachers’ conditions of services makes the teaching profession more attractive relative to alternative employment, and so may help to reduce the rate of attrition among current teachers. Improvements in the compensation of teachers will be closely linked to improvements in their qualifications and performance as teachers are provided with increased opportunities for in-service training.

Increasing access to primary schooling is mainly a matter of building schools and training teachers, but the scale of expansion required to bring about universal primary schooling and increase access in other parts of the educational system means that alternative delivery mechanisms must also be explored. The Ministry of Education is committed to this exploration, which may be carried out in association with a multi-country project (“Learning without Frontiers”) that seeks to determine whether distance technologies can be employed to provide a variety of educational services more efficiently and effectively than can be done in traditional classrooms. The in-service teacher training program now being provided by IAP represents one successful example of distance education as a strategy for reaching large numbers of highly dispersed learners at a relatively low cost. Similar strategies may be useful for expanding access in other parts of the system, including adult and non-formal education, technical education, secondary and higher education, and even EP2.

In the context of planned measures aiming at improving teachers’ competency, distance education will be explored as a way to provide support for in-service training for secondary education teachers who lack, at the moment, an institutionalised supervision and upgrading system. This program will be developed with direct involvement of the Universidade Pedagógica, which currently is already conducting pre-service training for secondary education teachers.

The Ministry will continue to explore the application of new technologies in the education system, and will develop a policy framework that provides educational opportunities to the greatest possible number of Mozambicans in the most efficient available ways.

The second major objective of the Plano Estratégico de Educação is to maintain and improve the quality of education in Mozambican schools. The Ministry of Education is aware of the potential trade-offs implicit in the goal of rapidly expanding enrolments, and is therefore committed to policies that will enhance rather than diminish educational quality as the country moves toward universal primary schooling. To accomplish this goal the Ministry will rely on a number of different strategies.

MINED will review and revise the basic education curriculum, in close co- operation with representatives of civil society. There is widespread agreement that the present curriculum in primary schools is increasingly inappropriate to the rapidly changing requirements of Mozambican society, but there is no consensus as to what a new curriculum should look like, as different constituencies seek to ensure that what is taught in schools reflects their interests. Given this lack of consensus, the Ministry cannot develop a new curriculum on its own, nor impose a single model on all regions and schools. The Ministry has therefore initiated an ongoing democratic and participatory curriculum process under the leadership of INDE that involves teachers and other key stakeholders (e.g., religious organisations, employers) in the development of a new curriculum framework that is both sufficiently rigorous to provide young Mozambicans with the academic skills that they need and sufficiently flexible to accommodate the diverse demands and expectations of a plural and democratic society. The new framework will incorporate explicit attention to gender issues and the specific learning needs of Mozambican girls, in order to encourage their access to higher levels of the education system. On the principle that the curriculum should build on the knowledge that children bring to school, it will allow regions and communities to adapt the curriculum in their schools to local demands and preferences, including the increased use of maternal languages and teacher- produced materials in the classroom. It will also support the closer integration of EP1 and EP2 in order to increase the number of students who are able to complete their primary schooling.

Second, the Ministry will continue to assign the highest priority to pre-service and in-service teacher training, with a special emphasis on building up an institutional infrastructure to provide in-service training and instructional support for teachers in the field. In this effort, the Ministry will seek to ensure equitable treatment for women, both in their initial recruitment to the teaching profession and in their subsequent access to training opportunities and promotion within the education system.

Unqualified and underqualified teachers recruited in the past will remain in the classroom for the foreseeable future, and significant improvements in educational quality in all but the very long term therefore require additional training for them. Initiatives that will provide training for this group include the expansion of IAP’s current distance education program to include all “Level E” teachers, the introduction of systematic in-service training for newly-recruited teachers with ten years of schooling and no professional training, the establishment of training and resource centres (NUFORPES) in CFPPs and IMAPs, the strengthening of capacity for inspection and instructional supervision at provincial and district levels, the revitalisation of ZIPs, and closer co-ordination between ZIPs and IAP’s núcleos pedagógicos. In-service training for teachers is also an essential complement to curriculum reform. Teachers must be introduced to the gender and other perspectives incorporated into the new curriculum frameworks, and made aware of the curricular and pedagogical options that are now available to them.

MINED will review the criteria employed in the recruitment of school directors, and will begin to develop strategies for improving their qualifications and training. One key objective is to increase the representation of women in these positions, and to ensure that women have equitable access to administrative training.

School directors occupy a critically important role in the educational system. The leadership that they provide in their schools will determine to a significant extent whether key elements of the education sector strategy succeed or fail. On the one hand, the qualification and training of school directors is an important complement to the training of teachers. Substantial investments in teacher training can have very little impact if school directors do not create a climate supportive of innovation and collaboration in their schools. Moreover, qualified school directors can provide supplementary “on the job” training for their teachers, either formally or informally (e.g., through classroom observation and subsequent discussion.)

On the other hand, school directors provide the immediate connection between schools and the communities they serve, and few are adequately prepared for the effective performance of this role. As MINED seeks to increase the autonomy of schools and to enlist the participation and support of stakeholders and local communities in their governance and finance, school directors will have to assume large new responsibilities. Among many others, these will include working with school councils and other community structures to identify and respond to community expectations for their schools. As schools assume greater autonomy and responsibility in the educational system, school directors will also require training and expertise in financial management.

MINED will develop and implement a system for the collection of data on student achievement in primary schools, including a review of the present examination system. Systematic monitoring and assessment will enable the Ministry to track the performance of the educational system, and identify aspects of curriculum or pedagogy where improvement is needed. In addition, the Ministry will continue to work with educators to modify instructional and assessment practices that contribute to high rates of failure and repetition, and will encourage school directors and teachers to develop procedures for conveying information about students’ performance to their parents and guardians on a regular basis.

MINED will continue to provide learning materials to the neediest students through the Caixa Escolar, along with “kits” of basic educational materials for teachers and classrooms. In order to reduce costs, the Ministry will also take steps to ensure that the textbooks distributed to schools are sufficiently durable to be used by more than one student. In order to ensure that all students have access to textbooks and other basic materials, the Ministry will simultaneously call on parents, local communities, and other agencies (e.g., NGOs, religious organisations, and the private sector) to bear a larger share of the cost of maintaining schools and providing learning materials for students. A study of households’ willingness to pay for education that will help to define the potential scope for cost-sharing at various levels of the educational system is now nearing completion. Establishing the principle that schools are a joint responsibility of the Government and the broader society they serve is one of the key aims of the Ministry’s strategy implementation.

The third major objective of the Plano Estratégico de Educação is to ensure that the short-term accomplishments in terms of expanded access and improved quality can be sustained in the longer term. The goal of sustainability has three main dimensions: institutional, financial, and political. With respect to the first, the expansion and improvement of the basic education system require corresponding increases in the capacity of the Ministry of Education to define policies, plan and manage the system and respond to the changing economic and social demands placed upon Mozambican schools. With respect to financial sustainability, expansion and improvement require increased levels of expenditure, and a key question is whether the recurrent costs of the changes proposed in the plan can be supported out of local resources. Political sustainability requires the Ministry to establish forums and occasions for regular consultation with representatives of stakeholder groups (e.g., teachers, parents) and other domestic constituencies (e.g., religious organisations, employers) in order to hear their views on educational issues and ensure their support for the Government’s strategies for the education sector.

The Ministry of Education is considering the establishment of a National Education Council in order to institutionalise the consultative process, and parallel institutions might also be established to accomplish similar purposes at provincial and local levels

Implementation of the Plano Estratégico de Educação will impose new and difficult responsibilities on officials at all levels of the educational system. Most obviously, the decentralisation of significant administrative authority will greatly complicate the lives of provincial, district, and school administrators. At the school level, for example, school directors will be expected to take on unfamiliar tasks including curriculum development, teacher training, building maintenance, financial management, and liaison with the surrounding community. The effects of these changes will also be felt in the Ministry, where central officials will have to learn to manage a system characterised by local autonomy, experimentation, and diversity rather than compliance and conformity.

In the first instance, building the management capacity necessary for the implementation of the Plano Estratégico de Educação will require a comprehensive restructuring of the Ministry of Education, to ensure that personnel, resources, and administrative authority are assigned to the levels of the system where they are needed. It will subsequently require the reassignment or recruitment of key personnel to fully staff provincial and district offices, and the provision of orientation and training to equip them for their new responsibilities. Within the Ministry it will require the development of procedures for monitoring and supporting the implementation of change at lower levels of the system. Capacity-building is also required in the area of policy analysis and policy research. Capacity for educational research also needs to be strengthened at INDE.

The Ministry will undertake a study of administrative decentralisation in the educational system, including a review of the division of authority and responsibility among officials at national, provincial, district, and school levels. One outcome of the study will be a plan for building administrative capacity at all levels of the system, and for shifting personnel and administrative functions between levels in order to ensure the continued effectiveness of the system as responsibilities are decentralised.

To a large extent, the financial sustainability of the changes proposed in the Plano Estratégico de Educação depends upon the success of the Government’s macroeconomic strategy. If strong economic growth can be sustained, if the burden imposed by debt service can be reduced, and if tax revenues can be increased, then significantly higher levels of public expenditure for education can be supported. If growth slows, however, sustaining increased levels of educational expenditure will be far more difficult.

Under any but the most optimistic assumptions, however, a funding gap is likely to persist between the financial capability of the Government and the growing requirements of the educational system. In the short to medium term, it should be possible to finance this gap through the assistance of bilateral and multilateral donors. In the longer term, however, the Ministry will have to rely on a variety of domestic partners (parents, communities, NGOs, religious organisations, and the private sector) to sustain the higher levels of expenditure associated with expansion and improvement. Eliciting financial and other commitments from stakeholders and representatives of civil society will require the Ministry to share information and administrative authority with them to a much greater extent than has been common in the past.

Given the critical role that local communities and other stakeholders are expected to play in financing the expansion of enrolments and supporting improvements in educational quality in Mozambican schools, retaining the political support of these constituencies for the Ministry’s strategy is urgently important. This will require on the one hand the sharing of information about the implementation of the Plano Estratégico de Educação, and on the other the establishment of forums and occasions for consultation and debate on the Ministry’s educational policies. MINED will publish and disseminate an annual report in popular language on the implementation of the Government’s education strategy that measures progress toward the achievement of universal primary schooling and other key objectives including increased equity for girls. MINED will also support the creation of school councils in order to encourage participation, transparency, and accountability in school administration, and will develop procedures for regular consultation by Ministry officials with stakeholders and representatives of civil society at national, provincial, and district levels.

The central objective of the Plano Estratégico de Educação is accelerated progress toward universal primary schooling for Mozambican children. The Ministry of Education will pursue this goal in association with measures to maintain and improve educational quality in primary schools, and to establish an institutional framework for the educational system that will support further advances and sustain past gains at all levels. The critical tasks in the implementation of the Plano Estratégico de Educação are the pace of construction and rehabilitation of schools and classrooms, an increase in the number of teachers receiving pre-service and in-service training, and the continued provision of textbooks and basic learning materials to the neediest students.

The design of the Plano Estratégico de Educação is flexible, in order to allow regular modifications in response to changing circumstances. The plan will be reviewed annually, to assess the availability of financing, shifts in Ministry policies and priorities, and progress toward the achievement of key objectives. This review will include the participation of key stakeholders, including the Ministry’s main domestic and international partners.

The pace and phasing of implementation will depend primarily on the development of increased capacity in key areas of the educational system, including classroom construction, teacher training, curriculum development, and school administration. Capacity constraints in these and related areas are both financial and organisational. Success in overcoming them will require close co- operation between the Ministry of Education and the Government’s domestic and international partners. With respect to classroom construction, for example, the pace of implementation will depend on the capacity of the Government to mobilise local communities to contribute to construction and rehabilitation projects, and on the continued financial support of the Government’s external partners. With respect to teacher training, implementation will depend on the Ministry’s ability to recruit acceptable candidates for teaching positions, on the rate of increase in the output of general secondary education and pre-service teacher training institutions, and on the expansion of capacity to provide in-service training and support for new and underqualified teachers. Overcoming these constraints will enhance flexibility and make the system more responsive to the demands of particular communities and constituencies, thus contributing to the attainment of the Government’s central objective.

Within the Ministry of Education, general oversight for the implementation of the Plano Estratégico de Educação will be provided by the Consultative Council and a Steering Committee comprising representatives from the Ministry’s principal donors. Operational responsibility for co-ordinating the day-to-day implementation will be assigned to a Technical Council chaired by the Vice- Minister of Education, with representation from each of the operational units in the Ministry. The Technical Council will direct and monitor the implementation process, and will prepare and present regular progress reports to the Consultative Council and the Steering Committee. Formal review meetings for the Ministry’s domestic and international partners will be convened annually by the Ministry.

Successful implementation of the Plano Estratégico de Educação will also depend on the establishment of an effective process for monitoring implementation, in order to identify and address problems and adjust plans and targets in a timely fashion. Developing criteria and procedures to track the progress of implementation and devise appropriate and effective responses to changing circumstances in the economy and the educational system will require the establishment of a Policy Analysis Unit within the Ministry of Education. The Policy Analysis Unit will be located in the Planning Directorate, which will need some medium-term technical assistance to support the Unit’s establishment. Staff in the Policy Analysis Unit will work closely with officials and policy researchers at INDE, the Universidade Pedagógica, the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, and other agencies to conduct policy research and develop policy options for the Ministry. The work of the Policy Analysis Unit will also include the preparation and publication of an annual report on the implementation of the Plano Estratégico de Educação, and periodic roundtables with the Ministry’s principal donors to track the progress of implementation and address problems as they arise.

Successful implementation will also require regular consultation with civil society and stakeholders, through the National Education Council and provincial and local councils, and periodic roundtables with the Ministry’s principal donors to discuss developments. An important element of these consultative processes will be the establishment of transparent procedures for financial administration, including regular audits of the Ministry’s accounts and the sharing of financial information with domestic and international stakeholders.

The Ministry’s annual report will provide wide access to information on progress toward the Government’s strategic objectives, with data desegregated by gender to provincial and district levels. Among the indicators to be reported on in the annual report will be enrolment rates in primary schools, the percentage of females enrolled at various levels of the educational system, measures of internal efficiency including repetition and drop-out rates, completion rates in training programs for pre-service and in-service teachers, numbers of classrooms constructed or rehabilitated, and measures of school quality including the availability of qualified teachers, textbooks, and basic learning materials.

In co-operation with the Ministry of Planning and Finance and its main external partners, the Ministry of Education has prepared a Financial Plan for the implementation of the Plano Estratégico de Educação. This document sets forth estimates of the quantity of resources needed to implement the Ministry’s strategy, including estimates of the resources to be provided from the Government’s budget and from external agencies. The document also identifies the quantity of resources to be obtained through cost-sharing by households and communities, based in part on a study of households’ willingness to pay for education.

The scenario presented in the Financial Plan provides preliminary estimates of the cost and feasibility of implementing the Plano Estratégico de Educação. The estimates presented are based on the Government’s current education policy framework, which aims at a gross admission rate to EP1 of 86 percent in the year 2000 and 90 percent in 2002. (The gross admission rate in 1997 was 79 percent.) The financial implications of even more ambitious enrolment targets are currently under review.

With respect to investment, the Plano Estratégico de Educação calls for significantly increased expenditures for school and classroom construction. Reaching the Government’s target of an 86 percent gross admission rate in 2000 will require the construction of approximately 8,000 new classrooms for EP1 and EP2. At current construction costs, providing these new classrooms will require approximately USD$47 million worth of investment per year between 1998 and 2002. It is quite likely that the construction costs that the Ministry now pays can be reduced in the future, as a model of low-cost construction is defined and implemented, which means that funding requirements may in fact be considerably less.

Another key area for investment in the Plano Estratégico de Educação is pre- service and in-service training for teachers and school directors, and capacity- building for officials elsewhere in the education system. The goal is to create an integrated teacher training system, in which educators at every level of the system from the Universidade Pedagógica to the school participate in improving the quality of instruction that Mozambican children receive. Necessary investments in training include both support for the direct costs of training and expenditures to increase the capacity and effectiveness of training systems (i.e., the establishment and equipment of additional núcleos pedagógicos and NUFORPES, strengthening of inspection and instructional supervision services at provincial and district levels, the revitalisation of ZIPs). As above, the Government will continue to seek funds for training and capacity-building from its international partners on a project or program basis. Additional elements of the strategy (e.g., curriculum revision) will also be funded on a project basis.

To the greatest possible extent, the Government will continue to seek to obtain investment funds from its international partners. The Financial Plan estimates that the Ministry’s capital investment will amount to slightly more than USD$10 million per year between 1998 and 2002, so implementation of the Plano Estratégico de Educação will depend upon a large but nevertheless feasible increase in external support. External grants and loans to the education sector in Mozambique have amounted to more than USD$40 million per year in recent years. (This figure excludes support provided by NGOs and other “unofficial” sources, and also excludes loans from IDA and other multilateral agencies.) Maintaining or gradually increasing the total quantity of external support should therefore suffice to cover the investment cost of the Government’s strategy, as the Government will simultaneously seek to reduce its own commitments in the area of school construction by encouraging the participation of other domestic agencies including local communities, religious organisations, NGOs, and the private sector.

With respect to recurrent costs, the main implication of the Plano Estratégico de Educação for the Government’s budget is a significant increase in expenditures for teachers’ salaries, as the number of teachers increases in response to rising enrolments and as teachers improve their qualifications through in-service training. Cost projections in the Financial Plan suggest that the annual salary bill will increase from USD$46 million in 1998 to USD$67 million in 2002, on the assumption that there is no real increase in teachers’ salaries apart from the increases associated with improved qualifications. Real wage increases for teachers would significantly increase the recurrent costs that the Government must bear.

The expansion of enrolments and the construction of new schools and classrooms will also entail increased costs for learning materials and school maintenance. The Government will seek to shift the greatest possible share of these costs to parents, communities, NGOs, and the private sector, in order to reserve its own resources to assist the poorest communities and households. If MINED maintains its current policy of providing books and materials for all students, however, the Financial Plan estimates that the total cost of the Caixa Escolar will increase to approximately USD$45 million, although approximately two-thirds of this cost has historically been borne by the Government’s donors. Additional recurrent costs will arise from the strengthening of administrative and training systems. The Financial Plan estimates that the Government will need to provide approximately USD$4 million per year in counterpart funding to maintain new schools and classrooms.

The estimates presented in the Financial Plan suggest that the Government’s annual recurrent budget for education (excluding higher education) will have to increase by fifty percent between 1998 and 2002, from approximately USD$62 million to USD$95 million, if the Ministry is to move toward universal primary schooling. To achieve this goal, the public resources available for the basic education system will have to increase by slightly more than 8 percent per year, and the share of Government recurrent expenditure going to education will have to rise from 14.5 percent to 18.1 percent over the course of the period. Under a scenario that leads to universal primary schooling at the end of the decade (i.e., in 2006) a similar rate of increase in the recurrent budget must be maintained for another five years. The Ministry will seek to extend these resources by tightly restraining costs in other parts of the educational system and by shifting costs to households and communities. For example, if the percentage of students receiving books and materials through the Caixa Escolar can be reduced from 100 percent to 66 percent by 2006 the Ministry’s annual expenditures will fall substantially. Similar savings can be achieved by limiting annual increases in teachers’ salaries.

The feasibility of the Plano Estratégico de Educação nevertheless depends decisively on the willingness of the Government’s domestic and international partners to assume a significant share of the costs of implementation. The Government’s bilateral and multilateral partners will have to supply approximately USD$50 million per year to support implementation of the Plano Estratégico de Educação. Feasibility also depends on a variety of other factors. On the cost side, the key variables are the per classroom cost of construction, the rate of growth in teachers’ salaries, and the percentage of students receiving support through the Caixa Escolar. On the revenue side, the key variable is the rate of growth in government revenues, which in turn depends on the rate of GDP growth and the effective rate of taxation.

There are risks that must be faced in the adoption of the Plano Estratégico de Educação, as in the implementation of any significant change. In the view of the Government, the conjunction of favourable circumstances discussed above means that these risks are smaller now than they have previously been, and the importance of providing access to primary schooling for all Mozambican children justifies the risks involved. Nevertheless, the possibility that the strategy will fail must be acknowledged so that potential problems may be foreseen and minimised. There are five risks that merit particular mention.

The greatest risk for the Government’s strategy is that the financial resources available for the support of the educational system will turn out to be insufficient as enrolments expand. The rapid expansion of enrolments in the years after Independence was reversed in part because economic collapse prevented the Government from sustaining the gains that had been achieved. In the coming decade progress toward universal primary schooling could prove unsustainable for either of two reasons. On the one hand, the growth of Government revenues could be less rapid than expected, either because growth slows or because anticipated debt relief fails to materialise. On the other hand, the Government’s domestic and international partners may not supply financial and material resources on the scale necessary to the strategy’s success. If donors refuse to finance the UN Special Initiative on Africa, or if local communities refuse to commit their resources to the support of local schools, then the central goals of the strategy will probably not be achieved.

A second risk for the Plano Estratégico de Educação is that success in generating an accelerated rhythm of enrolment expansion will overwhelm national capacity to provide essential learning resources including trained teachers and basic learning materials for all students. If households and communities respond enthusiastically to the Government’s encouragement to enrol their sons and daughters in primary schools, the resulting demand for teachers and textbooks may exceed the available supply. The Government will then face a difficult choice, between refusing local demands in order to slow the pace of enrolment expansion and responding to local demands by abandoning minimum quality standards. The Mozambican Government faced a similar choice in the years after Independence, and the resulting decline in educational quality has proven extremely difficult to reverse.

A further risk that must be faced in the implementation of the Plano Estratégico de Educação is that officials at provincial, district, and school levels will be unwilling or unable to assume the increased responsibilities that decentralisation entails. Administrative capacity is quite limited at all levels of the educational system, and many school directors are barely qualified to fulfil the relatively limited tasks that have been required of them in the current centralised system. Others have displayed a great deal of entrepreneurial energy, in spite of the constraints that nationally restrict innovation at the school level under the present system. Assigning large new obligations to insufficiently prepared administrators, while simultaneously expecting them to transform themselves from managers to leaders, may produce confusion and frustration rather than systemic improvement. To address this risk the Ministry will adapt the criteria for recruitment to local administrative positions, and will provide training opportunities for local administrators and school directors.

A fourth risk for the Government’s strategy is that the decentralisation of administrative and financial responsibility will widen existing inequalities across regions and schools. This is to some extent an inevitable consequence of decentralisation. Some administrators and some communities are better prepared than others to accept new responsibilities, and the former are commonly more energetic than the latter in pursuing the new opportunities that decentralisation brings. The Ministry can ameliorate this problem to some extent by carefully tracking the implementation of reform, and providing additional support or corrective action for regions or schools that appear to be falling behind. In this regard, the Government will take particular care to ensure that decentralisation does not further disadvantage girls, who now face significantly greater obstacles to enrolment and persistence in school in some regions than in others.

A final risk for the Government’s strategy is that implementation will fail because the support that the Ministry needs and expects from its domestic and external partners is not provided. The success of the Plano Estratégico de Educação depends decisively on the willingness of parents, local communities, NGOs, religious organisations, employers, and other domestic partners to assume a significantly greater share of administrative and financial responsibility in the educational system, and on the willingness of the Government’s international partners to increase the financial support that they provide for Mozambican education. If the commitment of the Government’s partners falters, the strategy will fail. Maintaining their commitment will require the Ministry of Education to share information and authority with stakeholders to a far greater extent, and to establish mechanisms of communication and consultation that ensure that the interests and concerns of stakeholders are heard and addressed in a timely way.

The Plano Estratégico de Educação identifies the Ministry of Education’s main strategic objectives for the basic education system, and defines the strategy that the Ministry will pursue to attain them. The principal focus of the MINED’s strategy for the next decade is expansion and improvement in primary schools. As the Política Nacional de Educação makes clear, however, other sectors in the education system require attention as well. This section of the document identifies operational priorities in other sectors of the education system, and in some cases links these to specific project proposals.

Pre-school opportunities are of special importance for the children of the poor. They can provide children from poor households with the basic knowledge and skills that they need in order to enter primary school ready to learn, and they can provide nutritional and other support services for these children that increase their chances of success in school. Expanding access to pre-school programs for otherwise disadvantaged children may therefore serve two purposes, improving the internal efficiency of primary schools and increasing social equity.

Pre-school programs are now scarce in Mozambique, though the number in operation undoubtedly far exceeds the number officially known to the Ministry of Education. With only a few exceptions pre-school programs are organised and staffed informally, under the auspices of religious organisations, NGOs, and neighbourhood associations, and they consequently vary widely in the range and quality of services that they provide.

The Ministry of Education does not foresee a large role for the state in the direct provision of pre-school education programs. MINED will, however, encourage the expansion of opportunities for pre-school children and will, to the greatest extent possible, support initiatives by other agencies to improve existing programs or establish new ones. Support from the Ministry might take the form of training programs for pre-school educators, or access to space in public school facilities for pre-school programs.

Moving rapidly toward universal primary schooling and improving the quality of education in primary schools are the central objectives of the Plano Estratégico de Educação. Ensuring that all Mozambican children have access to basic educational opportunities of acceptable quality is of fundamental importance for the achievement of the Government’s broader development goals, including the encouragement of labour-intensive economic growth, poverty reduction, and increased social equity within and beyond the educational system. Providing places in primary schools for all children will reduce present regional and gender disparities in enrolment and attainment, and will help to equip young Mozambicans with the literacy and other skills they will need to obtain sustainable livelihoods in the future.

The gross enrolment rate in EP1 has increased substantially in recent years, from 54 percent in 1994 to 79 percent in 1998. The Government aims to sustain the current pace of expansion until all Mozambican children have access to places in primary schools. To achieve this goal, the Ministry plans to construct 10,779 new classrooms for EP1 and 1,860 for EP2 during the next five years (1998-2003). These new classrooms will create school places for approximately one million additional students in EP1 and 167,400 in EP2. A similar number of new classrooms will have to be constructed in the following five years (2003-2007) if progress toward universal primary schooling is to be maintained. Innovations in teacher training including a rapid expansion in capacity for in-service training will also be essential if the supply of teachers is to keep pace with the demand for school places. The Government will simultaneously seek to increase the quality of education by reviewing and revising the primary school curriculum, by expanding and improving pre-service and in-service teacher training programs, and by providing all classrooms and students with basic learning materials.

Ensuring that all Mozambican children have access to educational opportunities of acceptable quality is the state’s main responsibility in the educational system, and the Government will make every effort to provide the financial and other resources needed to accomplish the key goals of the Plano Estratégico de Educação. At the same time, it is apparent that the Government’s resources will not suffice by themselves, and responsibility for expanding educational opportunities will therefore have to be shared with a wide range of domestic and international partners. An increased role for communities in constructing schools and classrooms and supporting local teachers is especially critical in this regard, but increased participation by religious organisations and the private sector in expanding the supply of school places and increased participation by parents in acquiring books and materials for their children will also constitute important contributions.

The Ministry assigns great importance to expanding educational opportunities for children with special needs. Many children suffered physical and emotional traumas during the war, which have prevented them from attending school or have undermined their ability to learn in traditional classrooms. Children with handicaps similarly find their opportunities to learn limited, both because their access to schools is restricted and because programs and services responsive to their special needs are not widely available. At present there are only four schools for children with special needs in Mozambique, which together serve fewer than 300 students.

The Ministry’s strategy for improving the educational services provided to children with special needs is based on the principle of inclusion. To the greatest extent possible, those with special needs will be integrated into existing schools and classrooms rather than segregated in separate schools or excluded from school altogether. Successful inclusion will require training for pre-service and in-service teachers, to prepare them for the demands of teaching an even more diverse group of students. It will also require efforts to prepare parents and communities for the changes in their schools that may accompany inclusion, along with the development of teaching strategies and materials appropriate for use in inclusive classrooms.

MINED acknowledges the urgent importance of increasing access to non-formal and adult education and training opportunities in Mozambique, which is identified as a priority in the Política Nacional de Educação. The illiteracy rate among adults is estimated at 60 percent, with a significantly higher rate (77 percent) among women. Moreover, because of the steady decline in the rate of primary school enrolment in the years between 1981 and 1994, the number of young people who have never attended school is very large. Even today, nearly half of all children of primary school age are not enrolled, which means that the number of illiterate and uneducated Mozambicans will continue to increase for some time to come. Providing them with alternative opportunities to acquire knowledge and skills is an essential complement to the Ministry’s strategy for expanding access and improving quality in primary schools. Priority in the provision of non-formal education will be accorded to programs serving women, girls, and out-of-school youth.

Opportunities for non-formal and adult education may encompass a wide variety of learning activities, with potentially extensive overlap among different kinds of courses. For example, community health or AIDS education programs sponsored by NGOs may simultaneously provide opportunities for learners to enhance their literacy skills. Courses organised by employers or private sector bodies that seek to provide unemployed or unemployable young people with skills that will enable them to support themselves may also incorporate literacy or citizenship training. Catechisation or Koranic education in religious organisations often provide occasions for participants to acquire basic literacy skills. MINED recognises the value and importance of educational and training opportunities provided by these and a host of other agencies.

Non-formal and adult education programs can either be provided on a face-to- face basis, or via distance technologies. The self-paced and flexibly-structured learning that distance technologies make possible may be especially appropriate for many varieties of education and training. They also make it possible to provide training at a relatively low cost when learners are widely dispersed, as IAP’s teacher training project has demonstrated. The Ministry will support feasibility studies and pilot projects undertaken by NGOs and international donors that seek to develop national capacity for or expand local implementation of distance education programs.

Because of the magnitude and complexity of the problems to be addressed, the diversity of learning needs, and the Ministry’s other strategic priorities and obligations, the Ministry of Education cannot provide sufficient financial or human resources to support extensive public involvement in non-formal and adult education. The Ministry’s principal role will therefore include the development of curricula, learning materials, and standards for non-formal education programs, as well as the provision of incentives for participation by other agencies. In this connection, the Ministry will seek to strengthen INEA as a resource centre for non-formal and adult education, charged with training trainers and producing instructional materials for all agencies involved in the sector. Some schools, including elementary technical schools, may participate directly in providing literacy or skills training for non-traditional learners.

Other key actors will include domestic and international NGOs, religious organisations, local governments and community organisations, and employers. Private sector providers may also wish to offer some kinds of non-formal and adult education and training on a fee-for-service basis. The involvement of this diverse array of providers can maximise the local responsiveness and relevance of programs, and may help to encourage and support the commitment of learners as well. The Ministry will create a National Council that includes the principal actors in the sector, to co-ordinate, monitor, and support their efforts.

The Ministry of Education encourages the broadest possible participation in this sector, and can offer various kinds of support to providers of non-formal and adult education programs. For example, the Ministry can supply literacy materials in Portuguese and local languages produced by INDE, or help providers to gain access to school buildings and other public facilities for non-formal education and training courses. The Ministry will also establish an equivalence system between skills and credentials obtained in school and those obtained through non-formal education and training programs, in order to increase the chance that students who complete non-formal courses can subsequently find employment or re-enter the formal school system. In its support for non-formal and adult education programs the Ministry will not discriminate among legitimate providers.

The technical and professional education sector is expected to train qualified workers and technical staff in response to the demands of the labour market. It is also expected to provide students with the skills they need to obtain employment and earn a sustainable livelihood. Technical and professional schools represent terminal points in the education system, so the quality and relevance of instructional programs is of the highest importance.

The technical and professional education sector comprises three different kinds of institutions: elementary, basic, and mid-level. All three levels of the system have been neglected in the recent past. Only three schools remain open at the elementary level, which together enrol fewer than 400 students. Instructional resources at higher levels are dispersed across an excessive number of programs, and curricula are of doubtful relevance to the current requirements of the labour market. Equipment and facilities are often outmoded and in disrepair. The quality of instruction and the technical skills of graduates are seldom sufficient to meet the expectations of employers or the requirements of self-employment.

The Ministry’s priorities for this sector are focused on increasing access to elementary technical schools, with particular emphasis on re-opening and revitalising Agricultural and Arts and Crafts schools in rural areas in support of expanded rural employment and income opportunities and increased rural production. The possibility of providing some programs via distance technologies will also be explored. In basic and mid-level schools, the Ministry aims to maintain current capacity while restoring minimum quality standards. Among other things, this will require a substantial reduction in the number of specialisation’s offered, and the systematic retraining of instructional staff to bring their knowledge and skills up to date. Adapting policies and developing curricula to increase the participation of girls is especially important.

At all three levels, the Ministry will seek to improve the quality of instructional programs, and to increase the responsiveness of institutions in the sector to changing conditions in the Mozambican economy. Accomplishment of these goals will depend on close co-operation between the Ministry of Education and a number of partners, including labour unions, public and private sector employers, and other ministries (e.g., the Ministry of Labour.) The Ministry will establish tri- partite forums including representatives from labour, management, and the state for discussion of issues in technical and professional education, and supports moves toward shared governance in the sector.

Public and private sector employers have an equally important role to play as providers of technical and professional education, whether on the job for current employees or through the provision of formal or informal learning opportunities for young people and the unemployed. Employers can also provide urgently needed assistance in retraining instructional staff for technical schools, which is essential if these institutions are to provide qualified candidates for employment. Some NGOs also sponsor valuable programs that provide vocational skills training for particular groups, including rural women and street children in Maputo. MINED encourages the widest possible participation in the technical and professional education sector, and will supply whatever forms of support it can to alternative providers, including access to the equipment and facilities of its own technical and professional schools.

Secondary education provides essential preparation for mid-level employment and post-secondary education and training, including training for teachers. Rapid growth in the Mozambican economy over the past decade has significantly increased the demand for educated workers, especially in the private sector, and the supply of secondary school graduates has not kept pace. In addition, the expansion in basic education enrolments foreseen in the Plano Estratégico de Educação will greatly increase the demand for new teachers. At present the number of candidates who have completed ten years of schooling (i.e., ESG1) falls substantially short of the number of new teachers needed to staff Mozambican primary schools over the next decade. Labour market demand for young people who have finished ESG1 is likely to exceed the supply of graduates for some time to come. In addition, of course, increased enrolments and improved quality in primary schools will inevitably produce pressure for increased access to secondary education, and some expansion at this level is therefore clearly justified.

The Government’s objectives for this sector include a limited expansion in enrolments with a particular focus on increasing equity in access, particularly for girls and students from rural areas. In order to increase female enrolments at the secondary level, the Ministry will introduce a number of new policies, including scholarships (or exemption from fees) for girls from poor households; incorporation of gender issues and gender awareness in school and teacher training curricula; expanded recruitment of female teachers, school directors, and matrons; and enhanced security and comfort in boarding facilities for girls. To increase access to secondary schooling in rural and other previously disadvantaged areas will build 25 additional ESG1 schools in districts where these are not now available, and will encourage growth in the number and coverage of private secondary schools. The Política Nacional de Educação called for doubling enrolments in both junior (ESG1) and senior (ESG2) secondary schools in the five years following 1995, from what were at the time very low levels. There are now approximately 53,000 students in ESG1, and 7,300 in ESG2.

The Ministry will also take steps to improve the quality of instruction in secondary schools. These will include improvements in internal efficiency, to reduce very high rates of repetition in ESG1 schools; a review of the curriculum aimed at incorporating a less theoretical and more practical orientation; a review of assessment practices and student performance standards; the rehabilitation of facilities including laboratories; recruitment of qualified science and maths teachers; and an expansion of in-service training opportunities for secondary school teachers. The Ministry will also explore the possible utilisation of distance education technologies in secondary schools; for example, the use of interactive video might provide access to advanced courses in schools where these would otherwise not be available.

National development also depends on the training of highly-qualified professionals, technicians, and scientists to fill senior administrative positions and produce solutions to the many development problems that Mozambique now faces. The Government therefore assigns fundamental importance to expansion and improvement in post-secondary education. As in other sectors, the Ministry’s policies for higher education encourage the provision of educational services by other actors, including religious organisations and the private sector. The participation of these other agencies, in partnership with the Ministry of Education, is essential to the success of the Government’s development strategy, including the creation of polytechnics and other specialised institutes for advanced training.

A key priority for the Government is to extend opportunities for higher education to citizens in regions of Mozambique distant from Maputo. The Government will pursue a number of different approaches to this goal, including the expansion of boarding facilities at the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, the creation of regional centres for post-secondary education, the use of new technologies to deliver educational services to distant or dispersed learners, and support for the creation of new institutions outside the public sector. As the number of institutions increases the Government may explore the possibility of funding post-secondary students directly, with vouchers that can be used at any public or private institution.

The internal efficiency of post-secondary institutions is very low, with relatively small numbers of students completing their academic programs each year, and living conditions for students and working conditions for faculty are generally poor. At the same time, a recent analysis of higher education sector suggests that the present capacity of existing post-secondary institutions will be sufficient to satisfy the demands of employers until at least 2003. The Ministry’s immediate priorities for the sector therefore focus on enhancing quality and efficiency, with an emphasis on improvements in the motivation and performance of students and staff. Particular emphasis will be given to strategies aimed at increasing the representation of women among students and on the faculty.

Distance education has an especially important role to play in the expansion of opportunities in higher education. Within Mozambique, traditional technologies including correspondence education and new technologies including interactive video can extend the reach of existing institutions to additional students in distant regions, thus increasing the impact of scarce instructional resources. Beyond the borders of Mozambique, new technologies including videoconferencing and the Internet can provide students and faculty with access to courses and research produced in universities around the world. Co-operation with other post- secondary institutions in southern Africa is especially important. The Universidade Eduardo Mondlane is actively exploring these possibilities, in association with international partners.

The Universidade Pedagógica has a key role to play in accomplishing the goals of the Plano Estratégico de Educação. Implementation of the Ministry’s strategy for basic education will require the development of programs for pre-service and in- service teacher trainers, inspectors, and supervisors. Increasing the capacity of the Universidade Pedagógica through restructuring and the provision of necessary support will enable the university to make new and important contributions to Mozambican development, even as it continues and enhances its role in the training of secondary school teachers.

EMP/SKILLS - Skills and Employability Department