Are Children Learning in Mozambique? Part I

The bright morning sun rose impatiently, streaming through the window as the alarm clock signalled that dawn had arrived. We arose at the same time as the signing birds to prepare for the 30km drive to the rural village of Nathepo in the Rapale District of northern Mozambique. Nathepo had been selected as the site for piloting the tests and tools for Mozambique’s first citizen-led, household-based assessment of children’s learning.

Mozambique is the newest member of the People’s Action for Learning Network (PAL Network). The PAL Network is an internationally recognized south-south collaboration whose member countries work across three continents to assess the basic reading and numeracy competencies of over 1 million children every year. In Mozambique, the initiative is a program of NGO ‘Facilidade’ named ‘TPC Mozambique’. TPC is an acronym meaning ‘Todos Pelas Crianças em Moçambique’ (Everyone for the Children of Mozambique)’, but is also colloquially understood to mean ‘homework’ in Portuguese. The TPC staff explained: “The assessment is not just meant to give TPC to policymakers, but to give true TPC to all of us. It is the responsibility of everyone to improve children’s learning in Mozambique”.

Village life in rural Mozambique

Situated about 10km from the tarmac road, Nathepo is surrounded by large protruding hills that appear to protect the collection of small villages within their watch. As we sped down the red sand road, we peeked curiously down the smaller tributary pathways that wound their way into the distance. Women wearing brightly coloured capulanas walked steadily in pairs along the red sand paths, with buckets balanced carefully on their heads, and babies wrapped tightly to their bodies.

As we reached the bright, sandy market centre we were forced to seek shade as the strength of the sun was making our skin itch. At 7:30am, the market was already bustling with activity. Young men were selling mathathinha and papahi (small dried fish); whilst the women were selling a neatly organized selection of onions, bright red tomatoes, salt and small candies. Children surrounded us – playing games; giving each other rides on oversized bicycles; running around barefoot with car tyres and sticks in a competition to see who could keep their tyre rolling the longest. It didn’t seem that these children were preparing to go to school, I thought, but perhaps it was too early.

Does enrolment equal attendance?

We waited patiently for the village elder – Sr. Augusto Vahocha – without whom, we could not visit the sampled households. It wasn’t often that Nathepo received visitors, so when the TPC Mozambique team started to explain the reason for our visit, Sr Vahocha found a wooden crate nearby, turned it quickly upside down, sat and listened thoughtfully. Once the TPC team had introduced themselves and explained that we were trying to find out if children were learning, the village elder looked very concerned.

“It is good that you have come” he told us. “We are experiencing many problems in this village. You see?” he waved his arm in the vicinity of all the children running around “None of these children are in school today. In fact, schools officially opened two weeks ago” he told us, “but none of these children have stepped inside the school since before the holiday. Why? The government did not pay the teachers their salary last term” he explained, “so until they are paid, all the children are at home”. He paused, his brow furrowed. “These children are not ‘out-of-school’. They are enrolled, on paper. Their names are on the school register. But are they inside that school? Are they learning?” he asked us, exasperated.

Sr. Vahocha promptly stood up and led us towards the village primary school. We walked for a few minutes past the market place, through a small fence and into the school compound. The walls were constructed from bricks, the roof from iron sheets. The building was painted sky blue with a perimeter fence. “We have a very good school” he told us. “The children have somewhere to go. But just having a building is not enough! We can say that this village has a school. And to the local government, this is a success! But once you visit Nathepo, you see that the story is very different….”

Are our children learning?

Nathepo is one example of 306 villages that were sampled in Mozambique’s first citizen-led learning assessment in November 2016. The pilot assessment covered all 23 districts of northern Mozambique’s Nampula province, assessing a total of 9,901 children between the ages of 7 and 16 in basic reading and maths competencies. The assessment results will be launched by Facilidade and TPC Mozambique in the city of Nampula on Friday June 30^th 2017. The launch will explore the main findings of the 2016 pilot, initiating a plan for the progressive expansion of the initiative to national scale. “There is no doubt that action needs to be taken to improve children’s learning in Mozambique” says Facilidade’s Executive Director, Matilde de Melo “but we need to know the extent of the problem first.” “School-based assessments exclude a critical number of children in countries like Mozambique” adds Senior Advisor, Armando Ali “household-based assessments are a much more accurate indicator of whether or not our children are learning”.

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Part II of this blog will be released on June 30^th with key findings from TPC Mozambique’s first citizen-led assessment