Rwanda needs Rwf14 billion to ensure that every pupil or student gets a textbook at school in order to meet the targeted ratio by 2025 and improve learning, the Rwanda Basic Education Board (REB) has indicated.

It made the disclosure on September 20, during a public hearing held by the Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

In the hearing, PAC quizzed officials from REB about public finance and asset management issues exposed by the Auditor General’s report for the financial year ended on June 30, 2022.

Those issues include inadequate availability of textbooks for pupils and students in schools.

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The Assistant Auditor General, Jean Claude Munyanturire said the insufficiency of textbooks in schools was a major problem, pointing out that auditors observed cases where one book was shared by 176 students.

MP Jean-Damascène Murara said at Groupe Scolaire Nyabimata in Nyaruguru, a book is shared by 147 children.

"You wonder about the quality of education that will be offered there when a book is used by more than 100 children,” he said.

Giving an update to PAC members, the Head of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning Resources Department, Joan Murungi, said that currently, the ratio varies depending on the education level in question, indicating that it stands at one book to five pupils in lower primary, and one book per three pupils in upper primary, overall. For secondary school, it is one to six students, she added.

While REB plans for book procurement and distribution in schools, the budget it gets is far less than the funding it needs, Murungi said.

"Achieving the target of one book per student ratio by 2025 requires us to buy 4.9 million books per year, based on the number of students we currently have. The budget (for the 4.9 million books) is Rwf14 billion, yet we sometimes get a third of it [less than Rwf5 billion],” she said.

Also, she said that a book starts becoming old after three years of use and they should be replaced, while the number of students or pupils in schools keeps increasing. This implies the need for a budget to ensure the sustainability of effective book supply and access in schools.

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For MP Christine Bakundufite, it is unfair that all pupils and students sit the same national examinations despite the disparity in access to textbooks – as some have greater access to them than others, depending on the means at their disposal.

MP Jeanne d’Arc Uwimanimpaye said that since books are important in education provision to students, there was a need to consider unconventional methods of ensuring students’ access to books, questioning the sustainability of reliance on government funding alone.

"I think it might reach a point where the government will buy a book for a child from a poor family,” she said, suggesting that relatively well-off parents can support the government in covering the required funding for students or pupils’ books.

Meanwhile, Munyanturire proposed that given the target of 2025 where every student or pupil will have a book, the budget constraint and the need for book replacement after three years of use, as well as the content that must move with the times, there is a need for special means to that end.

Such special means, he said, include adopting digital books to save the high cost of printing.