The National Education System's 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 6th grade textbooks could be in the country as early as this month, about a month after the start of the current 2022 school year.

The guarantee was given a few days ago in Maputo by the spokesperson for the Ministry of Education and Human Development (MINEDH), Gina Guibunda, who said that the distribution companies have already been cleared.

Guibunda pointed out that in total 16,700,000 books have been purchased for monolingual education, 4 million for bilingual education, 600,000 for adult literacy, and 3200 Braille books for visually impaired children.

The spokeswoman said that when the manuals arrive, they will be immediately distributed to the provinces and from there to the districts, and then distributed to the teaching units.

"As soon as the textbooks arrive in our ports, we will proceed to distribute them to the provinces because we are already a little behind in some classes. The year has already begun and, according to the calendar, the 2nd, 4th, and 6th grade books should already be in the schools," he said.

The materials, according to Gina Guibunda, are delayed due to several factors such as the Covid-19 pandemic that has made it difficult to produce and transport them into the country.

Meanwhile, Guibunda assured that the delay in the arrival of the textbook is not affecting the course of the classes, because the curriculum has been designed in such a way that in the first five weeks the teachers are teaching subjects from previous classes.

"With the exception of the 1st grade, the delay in the arrival of the book is not compromising the teaching and learning process because the children are still studying the subjects from the previous classes," he said.