The Ministry of Education has embarked on recruiting ‘accountant secretaries’ that will help primary schools manage finances.

"This is a new move. The accountant secretaries will support school leaders in terms of finance and administration,” the Minister of Education, Gaspard Twagirayezu told The New Times.

Schools with only primary learners used to have head-teachers without staff in charge of finance since only schools combining both primary and secondary students had both leaders and accountants.

So far, he said, 466 accountant secretaries have been recruited to serve primary schools.

"Recruiting accountant secretaries for primary schools is expected to ease and improve operations of the schools,” he said.

ALSO READ: Primary school enrollment rises

There are 3,932 primary schools of which 1,326 are public,

1,891 are government-aided while the rest are private.

"The accountant secretaries are needed because the school head alone can’t manage all tasks that are currently facing schools including the school feeding programme among others. We also have technology systems currently being used in the schools which need such workforce,” he explained.

In the 2020/2021 school year, the government decided to extend school feeding to primary and pre-primary schools since it used to cover only secondary school students.

Information from the Ministry of Education shows that the parents’ contribution to school feeding is only Rwf975 per student per term (three months), while the Government will contribute Rwf8,775 per student per term.

The school feeding programme's budget rose from Rwf 22.1 billion in the 2021/22 fiscal year to an impressive Rwf 90 billion in the 2023/2024 fiscal year.

Data shows that 87.5% of pre-primary schools provide meals to pupils while 91.6% of primary schools also provide meals to pupils.

At the pre-primary level, the number of learners increased from 355,325 in 2022 to 540,998 in 2023, indicating a 34.2% increase.

The primary school learners increased from 2,742,551 2022 to 2,838,343 in 2023 representing an increase of 3.3%.

According to head-teachers, having accountants to manage finances for catering to such an increasing number of learners is timely.

Gilberte Mukakalisa, the head-teacher of EP Indatwa in Gakenke District, said: "We are optimistic that the accountants to be recruited have capacity to improve financial management of the school so that the school leaders get enough time to monitor learning and teaching operations.”

ALSO READ: REB announces teachers’ recruitment exams

The recruitment is in line with ongoing teacher and school leaders’ recruitment according to the ministry of education.

Under the 2024/25 academic year, 754 teachers were also recruited for pre-primary schools while 1,506 staff of which 1,026 are teachers, 14 who are head-teachers and 466 accountants were placed into primary schools.

Out of 1,449 teaching staff placed in secondary schools, 1, 125 are teachers while the rest will serve in leadership positions of the schools.

"The teacher placement in schools continues so that teachers are ready to start the academic year,” Twagirayezu said.