A total of 1,566 teachers in public schools are currently working without legal documents putting them in the positions that they occupy, the Public Service Commission has said in its 2019/2020 activity report.

The report, to be tabled to the Senate on Monday afternoon, indicates that teachers, who represent 6.6 percent of all the teaching staff continue to work without files, largely due to the incompetence of some labour inspectors.

For instance, the report says in six schools in Nyagatare District, none of the teachers is documented. Of the 2,430 teachers in the district, 807 are undocumented. In Nyamagabe, 391 of the 2586 teachers are undocumented and in Gicumbi district, 187 teachers of 2619 are undocumented.

The report also says that of the 23,617 teachers in 11 districts, it is unclear how 4,087 of them started working since there are no appointment letters indicating how they were hired.

The report also indicates that 762 teachers are currently working without having presented their school qualifications. This, according to the report, casts doubt on whether they are qualified to be holding the positions that they are currently occupying.

Not first time

This is not the first time the issue of qualifications is coming up.

Last year in October, the Ministry of Education announced that it was giving teachers without the required qualifications two months to vacate their positions.

The Director-General of the Rwanda Education Board, Irenée Ndayambaje said at the time that the move is related to the fact that a teacher’s quality is the most influential factor that determines student success.

"When students are taught by under-qualified or unqualified teachers, it limits their academic potential, however, highly qualified teachers are more likely to stimulate students’ desire to learn and succeed,” he said during an earlier interview.

Ndayambaje confirmed that a number of unqualified teachers would be laid off to pave way for at least 7,214 teachers the government plans to recruit this year.

"We have prepared the list of all unqualified teachers and submitted it to the ministry of education. The decision is that those who don’t want to study education must quit the profession,” he said.  

This, he said, would be done to improve the teacher to student ratio and cater for the new classrooms being constructed to decongest existing ones.

According to the estimate from the Ministry of Education, the country has 63,000 teachers, with qualified teachers in primary accounting for 98.6 per cent while in secondary schools they make 76 per cent.