Girls accounted for 44.6 per cent of the pupils in the first five years of primary education in 2002, and this rose to 47.2 per cent in 2008. In second level primary education (grades six and seven), the rise was from 39.4 to 43.9 per cent, while in the first cycle of secondary education (grades eight to 10), it was from 40.1 to 43.1 per cent.

"Certainly we have lots of girls in the system," said Aly, "but our target is to reach the minimum proportion of 50 per cent".

"Our challenge for this battle begins at home, in the family, in society", he stressed. "It is the task of all of us to mobilise, encourage and support the training of women".

Turning to technical and professional education, one of the main priorities of the government's education policy, Aly said the number of such schools has risen from 41 in 2004 to 77 today. The number of students in technical education had risen by 19.3 per cent since 2005 and now stood at 55,038.

Technical and professional education, Aly declared "empowers the human will to act upon all challenges, it induces us to new undertakings, and encourages enterprising initiatives".

Aly stressed that there can be no good quality education without properly trained teachers. So the government had reformed the teacher training curriculum, introducing new training models for primary and secondary education, "which prepare the trainee, providing him with didactic and pedagogical tools for the correct management of the teaching/learning process".

The reform was intended, he added, "to reduce significantly the recruitment of teachers without the qualifications necessary for teaching".

The response from the Renamo benches was to claim that nothing has improved in the country's education system, that many classes are still held under trees, or with children sitting on the floor for want of desks.

Leopoldo Ernesto claimed there were too many reforms with "constant changes of curriculum at all levels". This inaccurate claim was mild compared to what followed, as he described the government as "malignant", and his colleague Francisco Maingue called the ministers "thieves".

For Frelimo, deputy Bendita Mchumali pointed out that the worst disaster to overtake Mozambican education occurred in the 1980s, when Renamo gangs marauded across the countryside during the war of destabilisation, burning down most of the rural school network.

"Now they come here and talk about the quality of education, when yesterday they were destroying schools and killing the pupils", she exclaimed. ( AIM)