TOTAL SUPPORTS EDUCATION

The Total-led Mozambique LNG Project is supporting primary school teachers to deliver improved educational outcomes with a $500,000 contribution to the BETTER education project.

The BETTER Project is a seven-year project funded by the Government of Canada, with the goal of improving the quality of primary teacher education in Mozambique. The project is implemented by CODE and its Mozambican partner Associação Progresso (Progresso), in close collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Human Development (MINEDH). Since 2015, the project has been directly supporting the Institutos de Formação de Professores (IFPs - Teacher Training Institutes) in Pemba, Cuamba, Tete and Manhiça with innovative pedagogical materials, training for teacher educators, and support for professional practices of future teachers.

Phase one of the Mozambique LNG donation (USD $250,000) saw the printing of more than 110,000 books, produced in five local languages as well as Portuguese. These were distributed among to 4 teacher-training institutions and 54 primary schools around Mozambique, including 18 in Cabo Delgado. This contribution afforded children their first contact with books, promoting the development of reading skills at a young age.

The second phase (the remainder amount of USD $250,000), currently underway, has supported the development of two electronic textbooks aimed at improving the training of primary teachers in Mozambique in the areas of Portuguese language pedagogy and teaching. Further, the donation has allowed the development of a Ministry of Education e-learning platform to support teaching in remote locations and with distance education.

Ronan Bescond, Total’s Country Chair and Managing Director of the Mozambique LNG Project, stated that "youth inclusion and education are one of the pillars of our global social responsibility program that aims to contribute to the sustainable development of our host 2

communities. With this support, we join the efforts of the Government of Mozambique towards the development of human and social capital of the country".

Ronan Bescond added: "Supporting education is part of our expanded social investment program which includes a number of other actions, including supporting health through nutrition and HIV/AIDS programs, and agri-business in the Province of Cabo Delgado and training young people in Palma as part of our Catalisa project."

The National Director of Teacher Training, Remane Selemane, declared that "these manuals will create a new dynamic in the classrooms of the Teacher Training Institutes. The printed version that has already been distributed to the 19 IFPs that have introduced the 12th+3 training model has allowed the pre-service teachers of these institutes to use a material of improved quality in relation to what existed before, and the hypermedia version will add to the pedagogical potential of the manuals."

Francisco Manuel, a pre-service teacher from the Cuamba IFP said that "the manual is very interesting because it increases our learning. The physical version of the manual helps me to read and understand many things, but this digital version helps us to see how to apply each participatory technique through the videos. This will help us a lot to better understand the subject matter."

These digital resources, designed to be accessible online and offline in more remote areas where access to the Internet is unreliable, were developed from new manuals for the Training of Primary Education and Adult Education Teachers in Mozambique that were approved by the Ministry of Education and Human Development of Mozambique (MINEDH) in July 2019.