GASABO - The Ministry of Education has integrated poverty reduction strategy into the education system to boost the quality of education in the country. The move aims at improving technical professional education to ensure that labour market skills demand optimises the country’s human and economic growth potentials.

"This year, our priority action is to address education challenges which range from rates of school dropouts to scarcity of teachers and school facilities” said Education Minister Daphrose Gahakwa, who was opening a five-day joint review education sector meeting between her ministry and development partners yesterday at Prime Holdings. She went on to say that she hoped that this will help to reduce emerging challenges within the national education reform programme.

The 2007 statistical data from her ministry indicates primary school dropouts to be at 12 percent, while transition from primary to secondary schools is 51 percent.

The teacher-student ratio in primary school is 1 : 69 and 2 : 22 in public secondary schools. But in private schools, the ratio is five teachers for 21 students.

Sandra Pepera, the head of the UK Department for International Development (DFID) in Rwanda, called for relevant and sustainable education investment strategy to attain more development.

This will enable the Ministry of Education to give priority to policy and strategic leadership in teacher education to resolve their problems.

"On behalf of all Rwanda’s development partners in education, I would like to reiterate our moral support to her efforts to achieve quality education system,” she said.

"We look forward to welcoming our Canadian colleagues as the new partners at some stage this year, and we will continue to work with others such as Japan on this issue.”

She lauded Rwanda for having honoured the UN-set Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for basic education, where 96% of school age children are enrolled in primary schools.

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