The year 2015 was a busy one for most stakeholders in the education sector, especially head teachers, teachers, development partners, Ministry of Education, and more importantly students and parents. A lot was brought on the table and many initiatives were successfully executed.

From student support programmes, development partnerships, budgetary allocations, sector reviews and administrative appointments, among others, a lot of activities transpired within the education sector.

The government of Rwanda has laid out ambitious plans to transform the country into a knowledge-based economy built on a skilled workforce that is able to compete both regionally and internationally, it recognises that education is key to this transformation.

The Education Times’ Julius Bizimungu talked to different players in the sector about their plans for this year;

Dr Papias Malimba Musafiri Minister for Education:

There is a lot to be done this year aimed at continuously strengthening the education sector. We have put in place many strategies that which we think will help us achieve what we have set out to achieve. Some of them include the implementation of the new competence-based curriculum, reinforcement of school-based mentorship programme, enhancing the use of information and communication technology as an enabling tool for teaching and learning, and definitely developing new regional centres of excellence in teaching and research, to name a few.

Emmanuel Niyiroro, finance officer, Teach Rwanda:

The education ministry allowed us to start working officially as an NGO in December, but for the last years we worked in Rwanda, we’ve achieved a lot and the results are visible where we’ve had operations. However, this year we are planning to expand our activities in teacher training colleges. We already set the plans of establishing new pre-schools, where students especially in rural areas, will get access to modern teaching using local materials (materials at low or no cost). We hope we’ll play our part towards providing and developing the quality of education in Rwanda. Teach Rwanda is an initiative which provides post-secondary teacher education, equips schools with creative learning materials, and nurtures future Rwandan leaders.

Samuel Nkurunziza, headteacher of Kagarama Secondary School, Kicukiro:

The most important thing that the school’s leadership has to do is to continue improving the school’s teaching, learning, and other related education programmes to keep it relevant to Rwanda’s development aspirations. Some of our plans include equipping the library and the laboratory with new relevant books and apparatus. We also plan to train teachers through departmental trainings, equipping them with skills on how to prepare lesson plans and schemes of work. We want to put more efforts on new entrants by ensuring that only those with the required qualifications are admitted following rigorous interviews. And finally we want to repair some of the school infrastructure. 

Ismael Janvier Gasana, director-general of Rwanda Education Board: 

The long-awaited competence-based curriculum was finally unveiled. The new curriculum covering pre-school, primary to secondary levels is designed to empower learners with hands-on skills to compete at the global level. This year, we are doing the implementation, basically focusing on in-service teacher trainings, providing and developing curriculum materials, as well as improving monitoring and evaluation. As the education board, we are also looking at the ways of preparing the digital content and some other associated activities, which we think will reduce on our budget.

Jerome Gasana, director-general, Workforce Development Authority (WDA):

There’s a lot we achieved last year, like the establishment of the National Employment programme for providing short term skills, and definitely the expansion of new programmes where we managed to start up more than 10 campuses. For this year, we want to expand access, consolidate on capacity building through trainings, and we hope to finish constructing the first technical and vocational education and training (TVET) institute in Rwanda. We also want to establish the business incubation centres in order to spur the private sector institutions given the fact that TVET is still expensive in Rwanda. Finally, we are looking at strengthening the Made in Rwanda products, among other things.

Alex Mushumba, head teacher, Martyrs Secondary School:

Our first aim is to see whether what the Ministry of Education or the education board plans is implemented. So far, what we are up to now is to improve and put more strength in terms of the student’s academic performance. Last year, 95 per cent of our candidates passed, and we planned to at least reach 99 per cent this year. Definitely we are now recruiting qualified and experienced teachers so that we keep up with our set goals.

Henriette Umulisa, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion:

One of the main things we do and we will continue doing is the sensitisation of both parents and children in taking responsibility. Since we still have low numbers of girls pursuing science and vocational courses, we want to urge them to take up science, technology, engineering, and mathematics courses (STEM). This year, we will continue to urge parents to step up efforts in nurturing and protecting the girl-child in the country, especially those that are susceptible to teenage pregnancy. We already have some campaigns in place to raise awareness like Anti-Teenage Pregnancy, Family Promotion, Sixteen Days of Activism, Anti-Gender-Based Violence and the newly launched HeforShe campaign, among others. In addition, we are closely working with the Ministry of Education and the gender monitoring office to make sure we efficiently achieve everything.

Prof Philip Cotton, Vice Chancellor of the University of Rwanda:

We want to closely work with students, ministries and articulate what being ‘One University’ means for their success. We want to listen to students, get their feedback, involve them in all aspects of planning and operations; they will be represented on all appointment panels as the guild president has an office within the Office of the Vice Chancellor. We have to develop a much more robust approach to student accommodation. Again, we want to hold the staff to account for Itorero commitments in line with our strategic planning. We are developing open and distance learning, and we are working in a much more targeted way with partners to invest our time and effort directly in creating open distance and e-learning as a viable learning, teaching and assessment approach.

Creating greater uptake and use of social media for communicating and for working, is also part of what we have in plan. Innovation and entrepreneurship will feature in all programmes. And now that we have an innovation structure and strategy for assessment, we are getting standard setting right, and moving away from rot learning and superficial learning with assessment methods that lack reliability and validity. Finally, we are developing staff, as well as cross-cutting (cross college) research themes.