The Rwandan Ministry of Education is considering the recruitment of 7,200 teachers to support the development of a 12 year basic-education especially in remote rural areas as schools are set to reopen in September, an official source confirmed Tuesday to APA in Kigali.
According to Dr Irenée Ndayambaje, the Director General of the Rwanda Education Board, the recruitment intends to bridge the student-teacher ratio which stands at 59:1 in primary and 29:1 in secondary schools.
“The recruitment exercise was halted from the application processes, we shall resume it, verify teachers’ qualification documents, and start their placements in schools before September.” the senior Rwandan official said.
Reports say 3,799 teachers will go to primary schools, while 3,417 are destined for secondary schools.
386 teachers are being recruited for Technical and Vocational Education training (TVET) schools.
Together with three years of lower secondary education, Rwanda has implemented nine years of compulsory basic education.
The programme whose implementation started in 2009 was introduced by the government mainly to trim therate of secondary school dropouts as they will now attend the first part of their secondary studies at the schools where they completed primary education.
In 2011, a new strategy was launched to expand access to education from nine to 12 years of basic education.
During his presidential campaign in 2017, Rwandan Paul Kagame, has said that he intends to increase free education from nine to 12 years.
Goal 4, one of the 17 SDGs, seeks to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.
Rwandan officials said priorities that would help achieve SGD 4 include equitable access to Nine and 12-year basic education, improved quality and learning outcomes across primary and secondary education, improved relevance of education and training specifics to the labor market, as well as nurturing demand-driven TVET and higher education.
CU/as/APA