Rwanda’s ministry of Education on Tuesday launched a mass recruitment for 35,000 teachers to give classes in rural primary and secondary schools during the 2020-2021 school year, in an effort to improve education in these remote zones.
The mass recruitment also aims to improve the teacher to student ratio and cater for the new classrooms being constructed to decongest existing ones, the government’s Rwanda Education Board (REB) said in a statement.
Under the strategic government project dubbed “Rwanda quality basic education”, the ministry of education says that it will spend $126 million on the construction of 11,004 classrooms and 16,680 latrines to reduce overcrowding, a move that will require more teachers.
Official statistics indicate that Rwanda counts currently one teacher caters for 59 students in primary school while it is one teacher per 26 students in secondary school.
Reports also show that there are currently 2,479,366 students in primary school and 636,162 students in secondary schools whereby the recruitment of such a large number of teachers will serve as basic data so that whenever a teacher abandons the profession.
Data from the ministry of Education show that Rwandahas 65,000 teachers whereby qualified teachers in primary schools account for 98.6 per cent while in secondary school they are 76 per cent.
To address these gaps, the ministry is looking to upgrade some existing 16 Teacher Training Colleges to strengthen the preparation of new teachers and also upgrade 16 models schools and new ones to be constructed in KIGALI to support innovative instruction practices at the budget of $17.3 million USD.
Due to the on-going COVID-19 pandemic, schools will remain closed until the beginning of the next school year in September in Rwanda
CU/abj/APA