New law provides for slew of changes in university system
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Loading... - Diallo Mohamed
- 23 Feb 2023
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A new higher education law approved in December 2022 in Mozambique establishes and extends the power of the National Council for the Assessment of Higher Education Quality (in Portuguese, the Conselho Nacional de Avaliação da Qualidade or CNAQ) to undertake quality assurance in the country’s higher education.
The agency – established in 2007 – will henceforth be responsible for the “assessment and accreditation of distance-learning courses and programmes” in Mozambique’s higher education.
It has also been charged with registering higher education qualifications within the country’s national qualifications framework.
It has the authority to standardise curricula and programmes offered by higher education institutions with the goal of “facilitating academic mobility”, the Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education, Daniel Nivagara, told the Mozambican parliament in December 2022.
Under the reforms, which amend the Mozambique 2009 higher education law, higher education institutions must refrain from offering courses and programmes without prior accreditation by the competent entity, strengthening CNAQ’S mission which has been to “promote the evaluation and accreditation of courses, programmes and HEIs [higher education institutions] through quality-assurance mechanisms”.
The law gives more authority to the CNAQ to insist on changes to the composition of registered universities’ faculty, their educational methods and the conversion of services and teaching to utilise digital teaching technologies.
The new law also obliges all registered higher education institutions to set up a students’ association. Henceforth, the CNAQ can also insist that higher education institutions have sporting facilities and services to help pregnant women, staff and students.
The law also authorises the merger of two or more institutions of higher education, although such initiatives would have to be approved by the minister of science, technology and higher education.
The new higher education law officially recognises online teaching as a legitimate means of delivering higher education. And it establishes the principle of secularism in higher education institutions across the country, so that they cannot take into account a student’s religion when making admissions decisions.
Concerns over centralisation
According to Nivagara, a member of the ruling Mozambique Liberation Front, or FRELIMO, the revision of the higher education law must now move from theory to practice.
As for its recognition of the use of remote teaching, the minister told University World News at the Mozambique parliament: “The affirmation of the hybrid model does not supplant the essential modalities of teaching ... Nevertheless, the hybrid model has established itself in such a way that it is necessary to accept it.”
It is essential to make higher education institutions “aware of the need to invest in pedagogically appropriate technological infrastructures, in the training of teachers, students and technical-administrative staff, so that these are standardised ... and controlled, in the quality they offer”, he said. Read More…
