Africa-Press – Mozambique. Mozambique’s National Association of Teachers (ANAPRO) has urged the government not to blame teachers for the poor results from the latest round of ninth grade school examinations.
Cited in Saturday’s issue of the independent daily “O Pais”, ANAPRO protested at an interview given by the spokesperson for the Ministry of Education which claimed that the teachers were responsible for the bad results.
“Those statements are unacceptable”, said ANAPRO representative Carlos Muhate. “It is not correct to blame teachers for the failures. It wasn’t the teachers who created classes of more than 100 pupils. It wasn’t the teachers who decided that classes should be given under trees. It wasn’t the teachers who ensured that there aren’t enough books for the pupils”.
“These failings are failings of the Ministry of Education”, said Muhate. “Blaming the teachers for failures means running away from responsibilities. It means hiding the truth that providing a good quality education is exclusively the job of the government”.
Muhate said that ANAPRO is also concerned at the government decision to replace the night course in schools with distance learning, a decision made public by the Ministry of Education last Wednesday.
ANAPRO claimed that this decision “will again sink education. If a pupil has difficulties in face-to-face teaching, let’s imagine how much worse it will become with a switch to distance learning”.
“We are training illiterates!”, Muhate exclaimed. “It’s just a distribution of certificates. There are people who aren’t worth what the certificate says”.
“Distance learning is nothing”, he added. “Those people aren’t studying anything”.
The government claims, however, that ending the night course, as from 2026, and replacing it with distance learning, seeks to optimise the resources which the state is spending on teachers’ overtime payments.
