THE State Minister for Primary and Secondary Education, Dr Mathias Harebamungu, yesterday, announced that plans are underway to increase Science centres of excellence from one per district, to either two or three.

The centre of excellence is a fully equipped science laboratory established in schools through government funding. During examination time, candidates from surrounding schools use the centre to sit for practical exams.

The initiative is part of the ministry’s efforts to support schools in conducting practical classes in Chemistry, Physics and Biology

Over 3,000 secondary school science teachers were recently trained and about 1500 science kits containing educational lab materials like microscopes, optic and electric equipment distributed to various schools.

Some schools had to look for funding elsewhere to equip their science labs.
Aloys Nsabimana, the Director of Association of Parents for Education in Rwanda (APAPER) secondary school, Kacyiru, said that his school requested parents to chip in.

"It is expensive to have a laboratory, we had to ask each parent to pay an additional Rwf 5000 for science students,” Nsabimana said.

He added that it cost US $ 16,236 (Rwf 8,929,800) to set up a laboratory and every year the school imports chemicals, and replaces broken equipment at a cost of Rwf 500,000.

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