Premature to Include Pre-School in Basic Education

30 June 2011

Maputo — The Mozambican government on Thursday admitted that it is still premature to include pre-school education as part of the country’s basic education programme, given Mozambique’s financial and institutional constraints.

The government had intended to expand the basic education programme to include pre-school education as from next year, but now accepts that this would not be feasible.

Education Minister Zeferino Martins made the announcement in Maputo during a meeting presenting the results of a programme to develop pre-school education in the southern province of Gaza. This was an initiative of the NGO, Save the Children.

Martins said that the priority of his Ministry’s Strategic Education Plan (PEE) is to ensure that by 2015 all children have the opportunity to complete a standardised, good quality primary education of seven grades.

Pre-school education remains underdeveloped, he admitted, since of the 4.5 million Mozambican children under five years of age, only 66,000 (four per cent) have access to pre-school education.

Nonetheless, the Ministry “recognises the importance of laying greater stress on the expansion of the opportunities for pre-school education, so that children are better prepared to enter school at the right age (when they are six years old”, said Martins.

Although it was premature to include this in the basic education programme, the Ministry would, in the coming years, promote sustainable access to crèches and similar forms of pre-school education for children aged four and five “to facilitate the transition to primary education and to ensure that children remain at school and conclude this level of education”.

“The all-round development of children of pre-school age is a determinant factor in improving the quality of education”, Martins said.

“The first years of the life of a human being are fundamental for the all-round and balanced development of individuals”, he stressed. “They are the basis for all learning, and determine the contributions that he or she will make to society in adulthood”.

The Save the Children initiative involved 4,545 children from 30 communities in five districts of Gaza province. They were put in charge of 134 monitors, while the programme was overseen by a Management Committee of 350 members.

According to Sebastian Martinez, a consultant from the World Bank, which gave technical and financial support to the assessment of the programme, before the Save the Children initiative began, children between three and five years of age in the rural areas of Gaza showed serious signs of backwardness in their development, in the physical, linguistic and cognitive areas.

“This backwardness has serious implications for the education of children in primary schools”, he said. “The children are not prepared to learn so much in first grade and after, and there are very high risks of failing, repeating grades and dropping out”.

Martinez added that the pre-school programme, under way since 2008, led to an increase in the number of children enrolled in primary school. The children showed improved skills in problem solving, more exact motor coordination, and changes in social and emotional behavior. They had better hygiene and health practices, and reduced the amount of time they spent working on the family farm.

“The programme of rural crèches also had an impact on the older siblings of those attending the crèches, in that it increased their school participation”, Martinez claimed. “The parents also changed their practices and increased their participation in the labour market”.

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