The Government through the Ministry of Education and development partners, has embarked on the task of expanding the existing teacher training colleges as one of the ways of addressing the lack of qualified teachers in the country.

Speaking at the closure of the two-day meeting on the Reform of Teacher Education, Management and Professionalization in Kigali yesterday, the Minister of Education, Dr. Charles Murigande, highlighted the importance of expanding some teacher training institutions to improve on their capacity.

"There are institutions like the Rukara College of Education which has only 200 students. I think that is wastage of resources yet this college can be expanded to train a bigger number of teachers,” Murigande said

The Minister, adding that even the Kavumu College of education, which has a similar number of students could be relocated to a more spacious place to enable its expansion.

This according to Murigande, will help increase on the numbers of teachers that these colleges produce, hence confronting the problem of teachers’ scarcity.

The meeting, also agreed to develop a common training programme which will help create uniformity in the training of all teachers.

Many Colleges of Education and TTCs, according to the ministry, have different training programs which have been creating variations in the qualifications of teachers.

The summit which was attended by a number of experts from the international arena also recommended that the time spent in pre-service training be reduced and the additional one year, spent in school teaching practice.

It was also suggested that in order to produce high quality teachers, all people who join the profession should only be those interested in teaching.

"Trained teachers should not only deliver knowledge and skills, but also values, and this can be attained by making sure that those who join the profession are those that have interest in teaching,” one of the participants said.

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