KIGALI, June 12, 2020: The Ministry of Education calls upon Rwandans to partake in School Construction activities that will be implemented under unconventional and home-grown approaches during 2020/2021 fiscal year.

In 2009, MINEDUC introduced the “Unconventional School Construction Approach” as a Rwanda’s Home-Grown Solution for school construction with an innovation of cost-efficient operation method. This concept involves different stakeholders and Community in construction of classrooms using minimum available resources without compromising the quality.

The Minister of Education Dr. Valentine Uwamariya disclosed that according to the analysis conducted in 2019, there was a gap of more than 22 thousand classrooms and more than 31 thousand latrines that lead to current overcrowding and long distance that students cover to reach their respective schools.

“We are trying to solve overcrowding and long distance covered by students as the analysis done by the Ministry of Education in 2019 revealed that there was a gap of 22,505 classrooms and 31,932 latrines to reduce overcrowding, double shift and long distance in both primary and secondary schools. On the side of TVET section, during the fiscal year 2020/2021, it is planned to upgrade 81 General Education schools (9YBE & 12YBE) to accommodate also TVET Students” Hon. Minister Education Dr.Valentine Uwamariya said.

For the Government to afford the needed infrastructure to achieve access for all, through the use of unconventional school construction approach, mass mobilization has been a key enabler since all stakeholders such as different government entities including security organs, Private Sector, faith based organizations, Development Partners, civil societies and general Community played a big role in terms of provision of support such as money or providing local materials, labor on construction sites and during the supervision of construction works on sites.

 End of last year 2019, the Government of Rwanda and the World Bank signed a $200 million financing agreement to improve teacher competency and student retention and learning in basic education (pre-primary through secondary school) in Rwanda in order to address the issue of overcrowding in Rwandan schools, where $126 million is allocated for the construction of 11,000 furnished classrooms and approximately 14,500 gender-segregated latrines will be built across the country which is a half of Education classrooms and latrines that the country need to fill the gap. The Government of Rwanda under ordinary construction budget will cover the rest. It is expected that all these needed classrooms will have been built before the reopening of schools in September 2020.

 Currently construction works status for 2,704 classrooms and 3648 latrines on the first phase of Rwanda Quality Basic Education of Human Capital Development project financed by World Bank is on 55.49% on single story classrooms and 19.95% of G+1 classes as well as 27.61% of latrines.

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