Rwanda’s ambition of offering quality education has been boosted by the introduction of a new teaching hands-on and child-centred method.

This new approach is part of a new education programme referred to as CAPACE (Contextual, Active, participative, Applicable, Communicative and Experiential).

"When I arrived in Uganda in 1997, teachers and students were working very hard, but at the end of the day, results were not reflecting the work they do, simply because they were only pumping information yet what is retained is little” Craig Esbeck a program director explained.

"Scientifically, it has been suggested that 20% of what you hear is retained, 40% of what one sees is retained and 80% of what you get involved in is retained,”

Recently also, Craig Esbeck conducted a two-day tutors’ workshop at Kigali Institute of Education (KIE) on the new programme. It is expected to run until 2014 and is facilitated and co-sponsored by Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

"These educational tools work easily, are efficient and yield quality education in the shortest time,” Esbeck added.
Charlotte Phillips, Senior Programme Manager of Education at VSO, said that at least Rwf 602 million has been injected into the program to run up to December 2012, but said that there is still a possibility of obtaining more funding to extend the programme.

Phillips added that a number of volunteers from USA, UK, Australia, Ireland, Netherlands, Philippines and Kenya are expected to be deployed.

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