Effective collaboration between parents and schools will help ensure quality education in the country, activists said.

Apollinaire Mupiganyi, the executive director of Transparency International Rwanda, made the remarks during a review and peer learning workshop on community engagement in the improvement of the quality of education project.

The project, running from February 2013 through 2015, is active in 70 schools (both primary and lower secondary) in 10 districts funded by the UK Department for International Development (Dfid).

"When parents and teachers work together, there is an effective exchange of information concerning both performance and discipline of the child. This helps both sides to understand the weaknesses and strength of the child, which enables them to know how to treat the child and shape their future,” Mupiganyi said.

"Teachers alone are not able to effectively prepare our children both morally and intellectually for the future,” he added.

Jean Népomuscène Ngwije, the head of school management at Rwanda Education Board (Reb), said both teachers and parents are key to a child’s future .

"Child upbringing is a responsibility of both teachers and parents. There is need for both parties to collaborate to improve the quality of education,” Ngwije said.

An assessment by Transparency International Rwanda revealed that parents hardly attend school general meetings to discuss issues relating to school management, development and follow up on the education of their children.

The survey also shows poor community involvement in education and cases where some school staff engage in sexual relations with learners in exchange for marks.

It further shows increased levels of indiscipline among students, especially in the nine and 12-year basic education schools, with cases where students impersonate their parents when they are requested to bring them over indiscipline.

It further shows that some parents do not care about the morals of their children.

Responding to the findings, a teacher who preferred anonymity said poor collaboration between parents and schools is caused by the belief among some parents that the child belongs to the school during school hours.

"It is true children are under the care of teachers during school hours. But sometimes when we call parents to discuss with them the performance or behaviours of their children, they do not turn up, arguing that their role ends at paying school fees,” Emmanuel Ndayisenga, a teacher in Nyamasheke District, said.

Citing his own example, the teacher said some parents do not want teachers to discipline their children.

"I normally ask the school disciplinary committee to summon parents so that we can discuss the behaviour of their children together but I realised that parents were getting annoyed with me, saying I was wasting their time,” Ndayisenga said.

Jean Claude Bazamanza, another teacher at Groupe Scolaire Muhondo in Gicumbi District, said when parents have cleared school fees for their children, inviting them to discuss issues pertaining their children’s education is almost considered a taboo.

Marc Van der Stouwe, the Rwanda Team Leader for Innovation in education, said the project was set up to strengthen government’s initiative to provide universal access to education.

"The government enabled universal access to education through nine and 12 year-basic education, but we need to be sure that this universal access provides quality standard education,” he said.

Stouwe said the project provides community mobilisation to sensitise parents on their role in the management and development of schools and follow up on their children’s education.

He added that the project provides parent committees and teachers training on school strategic plan preparation, preparation of annual action plans, preparation of annual budgets, school financial management and auditing, and the school general assembly committee’s, responsibility.

editorial@newtimes.co.rw