Education and the future of Cape Verde
You can find learning opportunities in Cape Verde, shaped by a cultural legacy that still exists, but always keeping alive the desire to build a promising future through education.
The Cape Verdean education system consists of different pillars such as kindergartens, compulsory basic schools, higher education, technical training and higher education.
The most basic of these are crèches, although they are not necessarily a pillar of education, crèches are in great demand and there are many scattered around the islands, both public and private.
So the first pillar of education is kindergartens, which also have two options, public and private. The price to pay is very considerable.
Basic education, on the other hand, has become compulsory in recent years, precisely because it has become free for everyone. However, this measure has given rise to much debate, given that Cape Verde is a medium-sized developing country, and teachers are increasingly demanding a pay rise and many other legal conditions.
This is followed by secondary education, which lasts four years. In this type of teaching, teachers often face some not-so-good situations with their students, which in one way or another are safeguarded by the new educational reforms, which apparently value the student more than the teacher.
However, on the other hand, private schools are good bets for parents who want to offer their children a quality education, and this naturally goes hand in hand with the good financial condition of the parents as well.
It should be noted that every island in the country has kindergartens, primary and secondary schools. However, universities do exist on some islands. In this case, on the islands of Santiago, which has the largest number of both public and private universities, followed by the islands of São Vicente and Fogo.
It is worth noting that there is only one public university in Cape Verde, the University of Cape Verde (Uni-CV), which has many centers spread throughout the country’s islands.
In terms of training, universities offer courses in many areas precisely to counterbalance the large outflow of young people who often seek other courses in foreign countries because there are none in the country.
Alongside universities, there are training centers and technical schools that allow students to finish secondary school with a theoretical-practical qualification.
As far as vocational training is concerned, this option is highly sought after by young people who don’t have the financial means or the intellectual capacity to go to university.
For this reason, many young people take vocational training every year, which offers a wide range of options. And since most vocational training is short term, many young people get employed quickly, so they take advantage of this and go on to do other courses, or go to university, and then do a degree in a shorter space of time.
Challenges and prospects
The teaching profession and the Ministry of Education have been engaged in a real tug-of-war. Lately, the Ministry of Education has been on the receiving end of a wave of demonstrations and strikes over the teachers’ employment situation. Since the end of the year, teachers have decided, for example, to “freeze” students’ grades as a form of protest so that immediate action can be taken.
They are asking for better working conditions, such as a pay rise, a reduction in working hours or a subsidy on working hours.
The unions have put strong pressure on the Ministry of Education, which has done what it can because it belongs to the government. In other words, it’s not independent, which means that a lot of things don’t work as they should, starting with the insufficient state funding.
Today, talking about education in Cape Verde is the same as talking about quality education. But despite significant progress, the Cape Verdean education system still faces many challenges, such as the lack of adequate infrastructure in some schools, school drop-outs, especially in secondary education, and the need to improve teacher training, among many other aspects of the education system.
For four years now, we have been in the midst of an educational reform, but unfortunately this reform is far from being as successful and high-quality as we would like.
However, it can be said that there has been some improvement, especially in the implementation of public policies aimed at guaranteeing access to quality education for all.
And this is largely down to the schools that have taken some initiatives of their own to improve the educational environment, through projects submitted for funding and aid from partners.
Likewise, the Ministry of Education has been tirelessly seeking partners and funding to raise the quality of education to the desired level.
