Wednesday, 2 October 2019 - In its continued efforts to enhance education quality in Rwanda, the government through its ministry of education has embarked on “Quality Education Enhancement Awareness Campaign”. The campaign consists in a national wide tour to assess the quality of education in schools including primary, secondary, university, technical and vocational education, training institutions (TVET) as well as Higher Learning Institutions) in all 30 Districts.

Under the theme: "Strengthening stakeholders’ engagement in educational transformation to maximize teaching and Learning outcomes”, this quarterly campaign, now in its 6th edition targets 900 schools. The campaign activities, since it was launched in 2018, is based on a combination of school visits, in-class inspection and outreach sensitization activities, and a feedback at the end of each school visit.

Commenting on the importance of these campaign, the Minister of Education highlighted that it brought closer all stakeholders in the sector to discuss the challenges deterring quality education while helping them understand the role each should play.

“The campaign has been an opportunity to raise awareness on issues that hinder quality of education, and together with stakeholders seek solutions and address them. It showed us that we need to enhance the role of schools’ leadership, local leaders mostly the education inspectors at the sector and district levels. We should keep the momentum to boost quality education in schools,” he says.

The Minister says that once all players work together, the issue of dropouts, repetition, absenteeism and unwanted pregnancies will be curbed.

The previous five phases of Campaign bore fruits to address many issues that impede access to quality education. There was a significant improvement in management of ICT Materials, Improvement in school feeding and hygiene, improvements in school administration, improvement in reducing dropout and repetitions, 89 best innovations & best practices were observed and awarded.

The government has been making significant efforts to advance Rwanda’s agenda to become a knowledge-based economy.  Some of recent decisions taken early this year include:  10% salary increment for primary and secondary teachers, career path advancement which seeks to encourage people to join and stay in the teaching profession and a continuous assessment from (P1-P6 and S1 -S6) to ensure effective teaching and learning outcomes. Other decisions include mandatory standardized English language test, Teacher management by establishing a well-coordinated and transparent framework and the change of the academic school calendar to begin in September instead of January where this change will be achieved over a period of four years, from 2019-2022. 

Source: gov.rw