In the mid-1980s, the climate of political instability in the country worsened, provoking a major exodus of the rural population, which impacted negatively on the development of the school network.

Material destruction, the disintegration of social life, and the subsequent economic crisis largely explain the period of stagnation through which the education system passed in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In such a context, many schools were not viable, from a material point of view.

With so much collapse and destruction, one may even ask to what extent the very raison d'etre of the school had not disappeared.

The effects of the war were so severe that in 1992 there were slightly more than 1.2 million pupils in primary education -the same figure as in 1983, as shown in graph 3.4.

The balance sheet drawn up in 1987, after the introduction of 5th grade, showed that the conditions existing and forecast in 1983 when the process began, had changed radically.

In the areas that were not directly affected by the war, stagnation resulted, directly or indirectly, from a combination of the following factors: excessive centralisation of management together with weak capacity for super vision and control; inadequate training of teachers and management staff, particularly at local level; the socio-cultural distance between the schools and the communities, as a result of which the population felt no motivation to provide support.

It is important to mention that the negative effects of the war were not expressed in a uniform fashion across the entire country. As Graph 3.5 shows, some parts of the country were more affected than others: and up to today this factor has influenced overall schooling levels, when measured by province. Graph 3.5 clearly shows that Tete and Zambezia provinces suffer ed the destruction or closure of the greater part of their school infrastructure, followed in order of severity by Sofala, Niassa, Nampula and Maputo.

It is important to note that the development of education in this period was also influenced by the social and economic impact of the Structural Adjustment Programme (PRE) as from 1987. This factor in particular led to a profound deterioration in the conditions under which schools and teachers were operating, because of the recommended restrictions on public expenditure in order to correct the economic and financial imbalances (as discussed in the final section of this chapter).

Indeed, the worsening war, and the impact of the structural adjustment programme as from 1987, with negative impact shown in the reduction, in real terms, of education budgets, issued strong signals that the project of compulsory schooling for seven grades was beginning to look non-viable.

It should be mentioned that, although the school network and the number of pupils in the system had shrunk during the period in question, the overall population of the country continued to grow at an average annual rate of about 2%. The population aged between 6 and 18 was continuing to grow at a rate of 3.7% per annum, thus increasing the pressure on the weak and limited educational infrastructure.

The rules of the PRE worsened the funding conditions for a sector that was already suffering from the diversion of resources away from the social sectors to support the war into which the country had been plunged.

By way of example, in 1987 education accounted for only 4% of the General State Budget (including both the recurrent budget and the capital budget), contrasting with an average of about 12% over the previous seven years. Between 1980 and 1986, the recurrent budget for education represented between 17% and 19% of the total recurrent state budget. In 1987, this percentage fell sharply to 9%, which did not allow an expansion of supply in a system which had already seen a reduction in its number of functioning units (MINED, 1990).

But the crisis did not pr event educators and planners from developing deeper knowledge about the problems and challenges of the sector . Over this same period, prognoses and perspectives seeking to over come stagnation were developed, which made it possible to accumulate knowledge that would serve as a basis for designing policies and strategies for relaunching the education sector in the post-war period.

This national effort was still further empowered by the contributions and perspectives of the Inter national "Education for All" Conference held at Jomtien in 1990, which re-awakened inter national awareness of the need to place education at the centre of the major concerns and priorities on the social development agendas of governments and of international cooperation.

These national perspectives and a world context that was favourable for reactivating the education sector could have little immediate practical effect, given the war that the country was still living through.