Education in Rwanda

Rwanda is making a huge commitment to their education programme and currently is offering a 9 yr free basic education programme ( but pupils need to pass exams at the end of P6 to proceed to the next 3 years)and this is being extended to 12 yrs once the infrastructure is in place and there is now a huge building programme for new classrooms underway, some of which will be ready for the start of the new school session in January.

There are a few nursery schools( maternelles) in each district but they tend to be very overcrowded with very little structure and pupils can access up to 3 years of pre-school education at this stage although they rarely access more than 1year. I understand the government are currently looking at a pre-school curriculum and training for nursery staff and are hoping to role that out next year.

Primary pupils generally start at about 7-8 years of age and go up to Pr 6 when the pupils sit national exams to see if they can go on to secondary education. The numbers at the infant stages are huge although there is a restriction of 40 pupils per class with morning and afternoon shifts. Morning pupils start at 7.20am and work through to 11.40am and then the afternoon shift comes in at 12.40 and works through to 5.00pm, they then alternate the next day so that the morning pupils come in the afternoon. ( little wonder the children get confused  greeting me with “good morning” when it is the afternoon and vice versa). Also a heavy workload for the staff who work both shifts and at an average of £27 per month little wonder they can sometimes feel over burdened. With school roles of between 1,000 and 2,000 pupils there is a likelihood that there could be 6 or 7 primary 1 classes but then as the stages move up the school the numbers decrease, even though education is compulsory, as children are removed from school to help families work the land. At the end of each scholastic year pupils sit exams to see if they are able to move on to the next stage of their education and it is not unusual to see pupils of 9 and 10 still in the infant classes. There is however a restriction of 10% of pupils who can repeat a year.

As the education system has expanded there are a number of “Groupe Scolaire” schools which take pupils from Pr1 through to S3 and then there are Secondary Schools which have far smaller numbers and take pupils from S1- S6 with senior pupils having the opportunity to go on to higher education. At S3, pupils have the option (and this is normally restricted to those pupils who are getting poorer marks in their exams ) of going to a TTC (Teacher Training College) to complete their final 3 years of education which will entitle them to become primary teachers on completion.

For the first 3 years of school, pupils are taught in Kinyarwanda with English being taught as a subject along with Maths, Science, Kinyarwanda and Social Subjects.

By P4 English is used as the medium of instruction and it is particularly hard for the staff who have been brought up with French as their taught language, to offer their pupils good English unless like many of them they have come from Uganda where English was their language of instruction.

There is now a huge emphasis on child centred methodology, group work and  more interactive learning but teachers are still finding it hard to understand what this means and how they will address this in their classroom. The government has invested heavily in providing attractive text books to match the new curriculum but too often they are to be found in a cupboard still in pristine condition. Lessons are still very teacher directed with pupils copying repetitious exercises from the board but I have noticed that classrooms are laid out in a less rigid and formal manner at least creating more opportunities for movement within the class and group and paired work.

Some schools (only 2or 3 in each district) are supported by UNICEF and offer a feeding programme which allows pupils to have a lunch, usually beans, rice or casava  and it is clear that this produces far higher attendance levels.

One school I visited runs a rabbit breeding programme where the young rabbits are handed out to the poorest children to give them something to look after and care for.

I have not observed many lessons as yet but in the schools I have seen, it was evident that the Pr1 pupils got the poorest classrooms with little or no resources to support them. However I loved one lesson I watched which was outside in the field beside the school with the nursery class of 60 children from age 4- 6 having so much fun, singing, running about and listening to their teacher. She had them learning numbers in English in groups according to their ability and doing various other actions songs. It was a real testament to the fact that the greatest resource a school can have is a good teacher.

So What Have I Been Doing?

A question I ask myself daily! In the 4 weeks that I have now been based in Gatsibo, I have spent the majority of my time in the district offices. Monday mornings always start off with the mayor’s meeting at 7.00am when all the district staff have to give a weekly update on what they have been doing and progress to date. Money always crops up in the dialogue along with ICT, which is an eternal problem for the area in that it is pretty much non-existent. The mayor also takes the opportunity to reprimand staff for important things like not wearing their name tags or attending the compulsory sports afternoon on a Friday ( its amazing how many people are required to attend meetings in Kigali on that day!) This meeting can last anything up to 3 hours in duration.

During the first week I was told to go home because the DEO ( District Education Officer)was too busy to see me and to date we have still been unable to sit and have a conversation about what my role should actually be. I have taken the opportunity to visit  2 different districts to observe other ELA’s ( Education Leadership Advisers – my new title) carry out training for Head Teachers and Depute Heads in their respective areas. The sort of role I thought I was there to do as well.

Week 3, I was given the task of sorting out files for all the teachers in the district, there are literally thousands of them, as they all needed to be put into their respective schools, within their allocated sectors along with their letters of appointment and qualifications. This arrived in mountainous piles of paper which had to be laboriously gone through. On completion, this will then allow district staff ( again I think this role may fall in my direction) to check on  salary grades to ensure that staff are getting paid the correct amount of money and have the appropriate qualifications for the jobs they are doing. Over 20 Head Teachers in the district were demoted from their posts when the government brought in a recent law which stated that all Head Teachers must hold a university degree, instead new Head Teachers have been appointed who have little or no teaching experience.

Last week, I was given an hour’s notice to go and pack my things to attend a 5 day workshop in Nygatare, the nearest large settlement which is about an hour and half away on the road north. The letter about the workshop dated 4 weeks previously! stated learning and teaching materials so I got quite excited. After a typical two and a half hour wait at the bus stop, while we waited for the mayor to authorize the trip, I arrived at the appointed school where the workshop was to be held to be told that as it was quite late in the afternoon and some of the district representatives had not yet arrived we would not now start until the next day so we could go back into town ( we had to take a moto taxi which took the form of a cross country scramble ride to get there) and go and look for some accommodation!! How naïve was I to think that accommodation would be provided! I had not come with sufficient funds to stay anywhere for a week! Another head teacher who was in the same position and I decided we would travel up each day which meant getting the first bus to leave at 5.40am which would ensure our arrival for 8.00am each morning!

The training took the form of a procurement exercise which involved trying out a new online ordering system for text books and to ensure it was working properly, our task was to laboriously enter all the text book orders for our respective districts from the previous year so for 4 days, DEO’s and Head Teachers sat and entered data, hampered by very poor internet connection and continual power cuts. One of the favourite sayings for the week, that I am trying so hard to adopt, is “Let us be patient.”