There is need for more notions and projects that promote sciences if more students are to embrace the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) field.
Some stakeholders such as Rwanda Education Board, African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), Master card Foundation, amongst others have assumed this responsibility to change the narrative especially in rural areas, where a big number of students lack resources to boost their performance.
Initiatives such as ‘adopt-a village for science,’ Teacher Training Programs among others are making an impact by availing competition platforms mainly, something that is meant to attract more students’ participation.
For example ‘adopt-a village for science’ is championed by AIMS and in 2018, the campaign was piloted in Kamonyi district, Kayumbo sector with plans of scaling it up to other parts of the country.
This particular drive in Kayumbo sector mainly hosted competitions at the community level – creating opportunity for students to know about the significance of mathematics, as well as providing them with necessary equipment– solar lamps in particular to facilitate their studies since the area is not well covered by electricity.
Fred Kamonyi Kubwimana, a senior two student at Groupe Scolaire Kayumbo, is aspiring to be a doctor, however, he notes that as science students, they encounter a number of challenges.
For example he notes that because science subjects call for ample revision, this is hard to attain since they don’t have access to some resources such as electricity at home and that this hindered his performance.
Students who took part in the tournament were awarded with solar lamps among other items; something Kubwimana says will facilitate students to do more revision at night.
"The lamp is helping me to revise at night. In the past, we almost could only learn from school because it was hard to do it from home,” he said.
Herine Otieno-Menya, the Director of Teacher Training Program at AIMS, another of the initiatives in place to promote science subjects, explained that there was an increase in the number of students expressing interest in mathematics in Kayumbo sector.
This is why she believes that with more effort, this initiative should be scaled around the country.
"We want to rally more stakeholders to come and work with us to multiply the number of mathematics’ tournament across villages in Rwanda. We want to work towards helping students love mathematics and sciences,” she said.
Talking about the importance of such initiatives, she gave an example of the impact a solar lamp can have on the studies of a student in a rural area.
"Students told us that however much they wanted to do school work at home, it was so hard since they could go home, do their chores and by the time they could finish, it would be dark. We need to light up homes in rural Rwanda for STEM education,” she added.
Otieno said that the initiative targets day school students since their performance is lower than their boarding counterparts.
"For example we recently did a mathematics Olympiad selection test where we wanted to prepare a team to take for the Pan African Mathematics Olympiad next year. The results of the test showed that the twenty students who emerged top were all from boarding schools,” she said.
"We have capable students in rural day schools but we need to work with them. We see ourselves multiplying the mathematics tournament across villages in Rwanda, and spread the love of mathematics and sciences - something that will be done progressively.”
An emphasis on girls
Beatrice Nshizirungu, a day school teacher from Kayonza highlighted the need to demystify mathematics in the eyes of girls by putting in place more strategies.
Being a female teacher, Nshizirungu said that it gives her a platform to act as a role model for female students to pursue mathematics and that she is seeing this yielding results.
editor@newtimesrwanda.com