Rwanda is among the top three performers in the world in reducing the out-of-school population, a UN report says. 

The UN Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) annual report released yesterday names Rwanda alongside Vietnam and Laos (in south-east Asia) as the best three performers.

The Unesco Education for All global monitoring report indicates that Rwanda reduced by at least 85 percent out-of-school population over the past five years. 

This year’s theme for the report was on quality of teaching and learning, where Rwanda has tremendously excelled by increasing access to education.

The country has one of the highest primary school enrollment rate in Africa, with 96.5 per cent children in schools.

Dr Vincent Biruta, the Education minister, yesterday attributed the rating to the country’s vision as well as partnership between development partners and citizenry who contributed immensely toward the construction of Nine- and 12-Year Basic Education classrooms through community work and funds.

The Ministry of Education launched the 12-Year Basic Education (12YBE) in 2012 after successful implementation of the Nine-Year Basic Education, initiated in 2009.

The initiatives gave Rwandan children the right to study the first 12 grades, which is primary and secondary education, free of charge, significantly increasing the number of students completing primary school and O-Level education.

"We are happy with the achievement but there is still a lot to be done. In our next five year strategic plans we intend to focus on early childhood education and special needs education,” the minister said.

Up to 2000 classrooms are to be built under the 12 Years Basic Education during the 2013/14 financial year.

The government, Dr Biruta added, will also embark on various other initiatives, including continuous training of secondary school teachers.

Currently, only 67 per cent of secondary school teachers in the country are qualified compared to 96 per cent in primary.

"There is still a shortage of qualified teachers in secondary schools but we are aware of it and we have catered for it in our plan,” the minister said.

Global outlook

The 11th edition of the report reveals that a global learning crisis costs governments $129bn annually.

It shows that 10 per cent of global spending on primary education is being lost on poor quality education that leaves one in four pupils in poor countries unable to read.

In many sub-Saharan African countries, for example, the report indicates that only one in five of the poorest children reach the end of primary school having learnt the basics in reading and arithmetic.

It says about 175 million young people in poor countries (an equivalent of one-quarter of the youth population) cannot read all or part of a sentence, affecting one third of young women in South and West Asia.

The world report says at least 5.2 million teachers need to be recruited by 2015 if quality of education in developing countries is to improve.

The report comes less than a year before the deadline for the Millennium Development Goal of achieving universally effective primary education.