"The new thing is that in the fifth grade, starting this upcoming school year, we will be introducing French", said the Minister of Education, speaking to the press before the meeting with the directors of the provincial education offices, which was used to analyse the preparations for the next school year.
"We want our children to be able to learn a foreign language at an early age, and according to our basic law we have to teach our children French and English", she said, adding: "As we have a vast French-speaking border (...) and, on the other hand, we also have great support in the training of French language teachers from the French government itself, we will start with French in the fifth grade".
However, the teaching of other languages will not stop there. According to Luísa Grilo, the introduction of national languages in public education is expected for the 2025/2026 school year.
"We will also challenge our teachers to continue producing materials in national languages. We have carried out an initial training session for a group of teachers that we have in the different provinces and we have started to create stories to be used in classes in our national languages", she explained.
"This year we will not introduce national languages yet because the material we have is not enough", she added.
On the occasion, she mentioned that new projects will also be implemented in the sector that she manages in the next academic year, including learning plans for primary education.
"We want all children to be able to read and do basic arithmetic when they finish second grade", she pointed out.
"Another challenge that we are proposing is for the pilot project to test the new management model for the fifth and sixth grades (...). We need to train teachers so that they are able to work with this new curriculum model (...). It is not a complex task, but it requires some work on the part of the teachers (...)", the minister also said.
According to the minister, classes will officially start on September 2nd, but the official opening ceremony for the school year is scheduled for 30 August in Uíge.
Luísa Grilo also ruled out the hypothesis that classes would be interrupted because of the census (scheduled for September 19), explaining that they are organized and that students training in primary teaching will replace the teachers who will participate in the census, under the supervision of a technical team being created by the guardianship.
She also reported that at least one million new students are expected to enter the country's education system during the current school year, and announced that the 12th edition of the National School Games for students in the first and second cycles of primary and secondary education will take place between 17 and 29 August in Uíge.
