This year, the education sector has been a beehive of activity. The Ministry of Education, Rwanda Education Board, and other stakeholders have had various issues to deal with, some successfully, others unsuccessfully.

The school feeding programme

Early in the year, government announced a new school feeding programme in 12-Year Basic Education (12YBE) schools during the Annual  Leaders Retreat. While launching the programme in the City of Kigali at GS Camp Kanombe in Kicukiro District a few months later, former state minister for primary and secondary education Mathias Harebamungu, said under the policy, boarding schools were supposed to serve nutritious meals to students. It also calls upon parents with students in day schools offering 12YBE to devise means to feed their children. Most students stay at school from 7am to 2.30pm without lunch which, according to ministry officials, affects their performance.

"Parents should feed their children at school like they do at home. They should contribute towards their children’s lunch so that they can study well,” said Olivier Rwamukwaya, the current Minister of State for Primary and Secondary Education.

However, much as schools and parents welcomed the idea, the question that arose was whether parents could sustain the programme on their own without government intervention. But the financial budget’s came in handy.

Education Budget

The budget was read a few days after the feeding programme was launched. According to the budget, education received Rwf236.3bn this financial year. The funds are meant to mainly improve infrastructure, equipment, welfare of teachers and the wellbeing of students. The resource envelope will also be used to set up a university project and cater for students study loans.

Budget’s priority areas

Rukara College of Education in Eastern Province received a development budget of Rwf 2.7bn to facilitate accommodation of 1,000 students from the Kavumu College of Education in the Southern province, a move that would see the two merging to form Rwanda Teachers College.

Structures that are meant to be improved at the school include a students’ hostel, a multi-purpose hall and a library. It was also noted that a school canteen and a fence would be constructed to ensure student’s comfort and security.

Chadrac Ntirandekura, the school’s publicist, said: "Since our demands outweighed the funds we had, there was no option but to spend it prudently.”

The Workforce Development Authority (WDA), a parastatal that is mandated to promote, facilitate and guide the development, upgrading of skills among others, was allocated Rwf13.9 billion.

According to Jerôme Gasana, the WDA director General, the money was key in increasing the number of schools across the country to meet the 2020 objective of having three Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET) schools per district.

"A number of projects are ongoing in Musanze, Gicumbi and Kayonza districts, where the construction of schools is expected to be completed by August,” Gasana told The Education Times.

The 2017 target

The country’s target is to have 60 percent of secondary students joining TVET schools by 2017, as opposed to the current 40 percent. This initiative requires increasing the number of TVET students by at least 5 percent every year.

According to information from WDA, the number of students enrolling for TVET increased to 83,909 last year from 51,773 students in 2010.

However, increased enrolment of students for TVET was bound to put pressure on technical tertiary institutions to upgrade their facilities to accommodate more students.

Last year, WDA achieved the target of having one tertiary institution per province to deal with this number.

According to the authority, the institutions are under Polytechnic Regional Centres (IPRC).

Improving capacity of IPRC

Since the previous fiscal year, work had been underway to expand IPRC Kicukiro, a school which currently accommodates 3,662 students.

The objective is to increase this number to 10,000 students by 2020 and Rwf10.4bn was allocated for the expansion of this school in the closing fiscal year.

The money went into construction of a four-storey complex with 170 rooms that will include a trainers’ centre, a learning centre and an ICT centre.

Officials from the school said they expect the facility to be ready for use by 2015.

Umutara Polytechnique from Nyagatare district, Eastern Province was given Rwf 1.1bn to purchase school equipment and improve infrastructure, while the Kigali-based College of Business and Economics was given Rwf 2.1bn for the same purpose.

One Laptop per child

For the pre-primary, primary and secondary schools, Rwanda Education Board (REB) was allocated Rwf11.4bn for school construction and Rwf 6.9bn for the One Laptop per Child project (OLPC).

John Rutayisire, the REB director general, told The New Times that over 90 percent of the projects had been implemented.

Rutayisire said: "Construction of schools now stands at 92 percent.”

Nkubito Bakuramutsa, who is in charge of One Laptop per Child programme, highlighted some of their challenges and achievements.

"Contrary to what some people think, we do not carry laptops to schools and just distribute them. Construction of infrastructure that will enable their use is always costly in terms of time and money,” Bakuramutsa said, adding that the money they received was used to purchase 43,000 laptops and setting up the necessary infrastructure.

Review of the curriculum

This came in handy to address the issues of skills among students and REB promised to implement the revamped version come 2016.

In the new curriculum, students from kindergarten to primary three are to be taught in Kinyarwanda as the core language of communication.

Dr Joyce Musabe, the deputy director general of REB (curriculum development), said Kinyarwanda, as a subject, will have an extra hour per week (from 7 hours per week to 8) in order to enable children master their language.

Verdiana Grace Masanja, a professor of mathematics and director of research at University of Rwanda, agreed with making Kinyarwanda the medium of instruction at the elementary level and argued that it should also be used in higher institutions of learning.

"Certainly the learning will be very much improved if children learn their first concepts in their mother tongue (Kinyarwanda). In this case, a child has higher ability to innovatively use the concepts than peers who learn in foreign languages,” Masanja explained.

"The history syllabus will have an element on the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. The aim is to help our children know that history in a bid to prevent a repeat of what happened in 1994. It will seek to impart integrity, peace and values,” said Jean Damascene Habanabashaka, an ICT and computer science specialist at REB.

Musabe also explained that entrepreneurship students will be trained on how they can be job creators than seekers; while agriculture studies will emphasise the principles of food processing that will benefit society.

The upcoming programme will also treat sports and gymnastics as any other subject and will be examinable.

While the current curriculum runs for 36 weeks annually, the new curriculum will run for 39 weeks.

Students’ loan scheme

The big announcement meant that students seeking sponsorship through bursaries and loans had to go through a competitive selection process before being considered. According to the new guidelines, students will only be applying for these loans between May and June, as well as October and November.

The scheme’s financial management also witnessed a switch from the Student Financing Agency of Rwanda (SFAR) to Rwanda Development Bank (BRD) and Alex Kanyankole, the chief executive officer of BRD, explained why.

"Since BRD’s expertise lies in the financial management, the course applications and selection will be handled by the SFAR (REB) which will thereafter hand over the information of successful candidates to us for loan processing,” Kanyankole said.

Loan applicants seeking sponsorship to study abroad are now required to apply directly to the Rwanda Education Board (REB).

However, this is only for particular courses as specified in adverts whereas doctoral students are required to register with the University of Rwanda before applying to REB.

Changing Kinyarwanda

And just when we thought no more exciting news was coming until next year, Rwanda Academy of Languages and Culture surprised us. They said they had modified the Kinyarwanda language attracting a lot of backlash from the public.

Dr James Vuningoma, the executive secretary of the institute, said that, first, orthography, grammar and dictionary of Kinyarwanda will be changed.

According to Vuningoma, over 30 million people across the East African region speak Kinyarwanda and with imminent regional integration, changing 16% of the language will improve its identification across borders in countries where Rwandans live.

"Some new terminologies will be introduced in Kinyarwanda to broaden its vocabulary,” Vuningoma said.

He also believes that the changes will help all people understand how easily they can write the language.

"We adopted the changes to help both Rwandans and foreigners easily write the language,” Vuningoma explained.

Vuningoma pointed out that there was need to preserve Kinyarwanda itself because currently it has become a combination of several languages.

"Our history being one of movement, every time Rwandans left, they came back with a mixture of cultures and languages such as French, English to form another language called Kinyafranglais,” he explained.

This kind of mixture affects its dialect and hence the need for language preservation.

"A workshop to identify terminologies for agriculture, animal husbandry and ICT, among others, will be conducted soon,” Vuningoma added.

Dr Abdallah Baguma, the Ag. Director Academic Quality, Higher Education Council, also welcomed the changes saying they are essential since they would match current trends in development to ensure standard communication.

Their views on the year 2014

Enock Nkuranga

This year has generally been a success because there has been constant evaluation of teachers. This has tremendously improved professionalism in the teaching practice and students’ performance. To me, this has been the best year ever in terms of education.

Ivan Muniina

This has been a blessed year. For instance, the number of candidates at both O’level and A’level almost doubled. However, a lot is still needed  to transform our education system. For example, most teachers use Kinyarwanda to explain concepts to learners yet exams are set and answered in English.

Carol Asiimwe

The year 2014 will always remain memorable. The new policy on feeding in schools will go a long way in helping students concentrate in class since they will have eaten. I’m optimistic results of this initiative will soon be seen in their performance.

Emanuel Ngarukiye

This year has been a blessing to Rwandans because education officials  have been on the ground. They have been involved with various activities in schools which has reduced absenteeism of teachers for fear of being punished by their bosses.

Jackline Uwase

We saw a lot of great things happening this year that have not been taken seriously in the past. For example, teachers were trained a number of times on how to effectively facilitate learning in English, the language in which exams are set.

Micheal Mugisha

There has been recruitment of more proffessional teachers which is very important for quality education. If we continue like this next year, we shall achieve so much in a short time.