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Rwanda: Government Gets 2.6 Billion to Build Teacher Colleges
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Rwanda News Agency/Agence Rwandaise d'Information (Kigali)
17 July 2008
Posted to the web 17 July 2008
Kigali
Amid growing voices that the high number of school going children may not be getting quality education, government has secured some 2.35 million pounds (about Rwf 2.6 billion) to start more teacher training colleges - and reinforce those existing, RNA reports.
The funding from The Hunter Foundation, working with the British government will build two teacher training facilities and is expected to result in up to 1400 new teachers being trained by 2012.
In addition to smaller classes and better quality teaching for children already in education, 700,000 new pupils will receive quality education each year, the Kigali office of the UK international development agency said Thursday.
Under the agreement due to be signed on Friday, there will also be support to establishment of the textbook industry in Rwanda. Commercial publishers will be engaged in the development, procurement and distribution of textbooks in order to achieve an average pupil-book ratio of 1:3 for both primary and secondary levels in three years.
Last year, results from the national exam for lower secondary showed that the level of students earning above the set threshold had been going down. The explanation from the Ministry of Education was that the rise in student failures was a result of a change in the exam setting methodology - to a new style that requires students to think harder when answering.
However, education observers say the problem has more to do with the fact the there are very few classes with a qualified teacher. Due to free primary and lower secondary education, thousands have enrolled - often outdoing the teacher-student ratio.
"Our biggest challenge is not quantity but quality", said Education Minister Dr. Daphrose Gahakwa in a statement ahead of the signing of the agreement with the two partners.
"The training and deployment of additional teachers is a priority to ensure that we provide the right kind of foundation for our children to access secondary and higher education."
The Hunter Foundation is partnering with the Clinton Foundation for the wider project targeting Rwanda and Malawi with an injection of some 10million dollars. It is believed the four teacher training facilities in the two countries should each be capable of graduating 200 new primary school teachers every year.
The Hunter Foundation will finance the project to build and extend the two facilities - one each in Kavumu (Southern Province) and Rukara (Eastern Province).
This investment will contribute to implementing the nine years basic education policy through increasing the number of teachers for lower secondary schools ("tronc commun"), the partners said.
Emphasis will be on training teachers in ICT, science and technology, and languages. Special attention will also be given to keeping girls in school, and equipping them with skills in these areas.
Following an accelerated training curriculum that reflects the urgency of this issue, the first class of 400 teachers in each country will graduate in less than two years, in 2010, according to the project plan announced June 26.
Assuming conservative class sizes of 50 students, as the planner suggest, these new teachers will educate 40,000 children across Rwanda and Malawi.
By 2015, the facilities will have graduated 4,000 new teachers, capable of educating 200,000 students each year, with the potential to impact millions of young people over time.
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The current teacher to student ratio is 1 to 78 in Malawi and 1 to 74 in Rwanda, and school completion rates are 30 percent and 52 percent, respectively, among the lowest in sub-Saharan Africa. (End)
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| Copyright © 2008 Rwanda News Agency/Agence Rwandaise d'Information. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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