Throughout the 1960s, there was a relative increase in the numbers attending school, particularly primary and technical education, in the suburban and rural areas where the influence of the nationalist movement made itself felt. This change in educational policy can be interpreted as an attempt by the regime to legitimise itself in the eyes of the African population and of the world, and thus slam the brakes on the advance of the national liberation movement. Another important objective was to attend to the training needs demanded by the timid project of modernising the economy, which began in that decade (Buendia, 1999).

The national liberation movement (1962-1974) posed education as one of the basic conditions for the construction and development of the Mozambican nation. Together with the political model of the nation-state, the liberation movement adopted the "modern" school. This educational project fundamentally rested on the scientific rationale of modernity, presented as the only valid form of knowledge, disqualifying all other knowledge.

The educational perspective that the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO) developed during the liberation war tried to distance itself from the educational concept of the colonial school in terms of objectives, models and practices.

FRELIMO's critique of the colonial education stressed that it was irrelevant and inappropriate to the needs of Mozambicans "not only because it reached few Africans, but also because the instruction given to those few was totally alien to the needs of Mozambique" (Mondlane, 1975: 196). The critique stressed the alienating character of the education programmes, because they promoted the distancing of pupils from their socio-cultural roots and reality, leading them to despise African values, and to adopt the values of the coloniser.

However, the critique recognised the merit of the colonial school in offering the colonised the instrument needed to know how to act in a situation very different from that of "traditional" society, providing them with the codes that enabled them to understand the surrounding environment and the new social dynamic better.

The recognition of the pertinence of "native" education was, however, mediated through the ideals of modernity assumed by the liberation movement. While, on the one hand, the nationalist perspective recognised the pertinence and force of the objectives and values of traditional education, on the other hand, it believed it necessary to adopt the school of "modernity" so as to meet the demands arising from nation building, and from the political and economic insertion of independent Mozambique into the world concert of nations.