The conceptual framework set out in Chapter 1 describes the linkages between the human rights approach and the human development approach in analysing and measuring progress, in which education figures prominently. As mentioned earlier , the Universal Declaration of Human Rights enshrines education as a fundamental right of human beings. For its part, the human development perspective, made operational in the GHDRs since 1990, considers access to formal education, in order to develop skills such as reading, reading and basic arithmetic, as a crucial dimension in people's choices.

Education allows individuals to develop, in addition to basic skills, the abilities needed to live and work decently, to take part in economic and social development, to take informed decisions about their lives and their communities, and to go on learning throughout life.

The two approaches converge in the direction of pressing countries such as Mozambique to take action in order to provide an ever larger number of their citizens the right to access to school education, in order to respond effectively to the challenges of development and, in the process, to pursue the principles enshrined in the inter national conventions the country has signed.

The central objective of this Report was to analyze both the progress and the challenges that the country has faced and continues to face in pursuing this noble objective. When compared with the colonial heritage 25 years ago, Mozambique has made substantial advances in broadening access to education for its citizens.

The data that give this Report its substance confirm that, once the constraints imposed by the war were over come, and regardless of the disturbances arising from conjunctural questions, education was again transformed into one of the most dynamic components of the country's HDI, together , in recent years, with income expressed in real per capita G D P. The positive evolution of the country's overall HDI, described and analysed in Chapter 2, illustrates exactly the direct results of this effort.

But it is clear enough for every one that Mozambique still has a long way to go before it can satisfy the imperative of universal basic education, and the provision of enough skilled personnel to raise the country to other stages of development. Apart from the effort to broaden access, there remains the challenge of making the school an institution that provides scientific knowledge, while at the same time training individuals with a high degree of self-confidence, endowed with socially accepted moral and ethical values, rooted in the national culture.

There is no doubt that the country is on the right path, but the tar get is still distant. Despite a substantial reduction in illiteracy, Mozambique continues to have the lowest literacy rate of the 14 member countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), which limits the choices of Mozambicans and is reflected in high indices of privation in many development privations.

The challenges posed to the education sector in Mozambique are multifaceted. Mozambicans must make efforts to mobilise the human and material resources needed for expanding access so that, in the long term, the country can, for example, guarantee seven years of universal basic education, and gradually advance towards the introduction of compulsory schooling. In overall terms, it is estimated that only 37% of Mozambican children are inside the formal education system.

Still more serious is the fact that, in the context of the asymmetric development of the country's various regions, it is access to education which reflects, in the most explicit and flagrant manner , the distance separating the south of the country from the centre, the northern region from the centre and the south, the urban centres from the country side, and men fro m w omen.

Although, in aggregate terms, 39.5% of the population is literate, isolation fro m the world of reading and writing is not distributed uniformly across the country. For instance, only in Maputo City and Maputo Province are 50% or more of the population literate.

The incidence of illiteracy remains particularly acute among women, where the illiteracy rate is 74.1%. Among peasant women the rate rises still higher , with only one in ten knowing how to read and write - an illiteracy rate in the order of 89%. The low level of schooling is obviously reflected in the lower HDIs and GDIs in the provinces of northern and central Mozambique. Planning the expansion of the school network cannot escape from the reality of a differentiated supply of education between the various regions of the country, and the difference between men and women in terms of access.

In recent years the education sector has accumulated relatively deep knowledge of its performance, problems, challenges and constraints. Since 1996 education has been undertaking a strategic planning exercise, which advocates expanding the supply of educational opportunities, as well as a series of activities aimed at reformulating the content of schooling, so as to improve the quality of the education offered and strengthen the capacities to administer and manage the education system.