The Ministry of Education will seek to address the ever niggling issue of school dropouts and teachers training in the 2015/16 Budget, in part, to ensure quality education.

Prof. Silas Lwakabamba, the minister for education, said skills training is critical to quality education and the vision of achieving a knowledge-based economy by 2020.

The minister was speaking at a joint review meeting of the education sector in Kigali yesterday.

"Teachers will receive training on the new competency-based curriculum that seeks to provide hands-on skills. We also want to link Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) to employment and this requires highly skilled teachers to produce competent graduates,” he said.

The Minister of State in charge of Primary and Secondary Education, Olivier Rwamukwaya, said school dropout increased in 2014 compared to 2013 but several measures have been adopted to tackle the issue.

"The government has adopted a ministerial order punishing anyone who makes a student drop out, be it a parent, teacher, head teacher or any other person will face penalties. The school feeding programme is also intended to decrease school dropout and the government plans to support vulnerable families to afford contributions,” he said.

Rwamukwaya revealed that government would also increase schools concentration to cut distance which is said to contribute to school dropout.

The ministry is re-examining school dropout numbers after detecting misleading statistics from head teachers, he added.

"Some head teachers intentionally report wrong statistics about the enrolled students in order to receive more capitation grant, and at the end of year, they report dropout of the students who have never been to their schools. We have detected that and serious penalties have been set against those dishonest head teachers,” he said.

In 2013, the school dropout in primary school stood at 15.6 per cent of the 2,402,164 enrolled, in lower and upper secondary it stood at 14.7 per cent of 361,522 and 6.2 per cent of the 204,848, respectively.

The ministry expects, from the on-going study on the 2014 education performance, an increase of the school dropout out of the 2.4 million and 0.6 million enrolments in primary and secondary schools, respectively.

Education stakeholders are rooting for the new verve.

"There has been huge progress in education in terms of access to primary and secondary education but school dropout is an issue of concern that we ask the government to assess and tell us the situation and causes so that we can partner to tackle the issue. We also appeal for improvement of quality and a more inclusive education,” said Laure Beaufils, the head of UK’s Department for International Development.

Noala Skinner, the UN Children’s Fund country representative, commended the Education ministry for the progress and appealed for increase of access, particularly to higher education.

The government 2015/16 budget allocated for education is about Rwf209.3 billion, reflecting a decrease of 0.4 per cent from Rwf214.4 billion in the current budget.

According to the Budget Framework Paper, Rwanda’s projected Rwf1.768 trillion for the 2015/16 financial year Budget will focus on intensifying efforts to increase agriculture productivity, addressing energy supply constraints, developing infrastructure for the productive sectors of the economy, and supporting export-oriented projects.

The Budget will be presented to Parliament tomorrow.

editorial@newtimes.co.rw