Rwanda Education Board (REB) has embarked on a country-wide exercise to assess the proficiency of about 40,000 teachers of the English language. The exercise, that targets all teachers of English, is aimed at identifying weaknesses individual teachers may have in the teaching of the language. REB plans to use the findings to design strategic interventions to help teachers upgrade their skills. Tests started on February 10 and will run until February 28, according to a statement issued by the board last week. Damien Ntaganzwa, the REB director in charge of teacher development and management, said the exercise is simply a diagnostic test in which no teacher will fail or pass, but rather meant to find ways to enhance English language proficiency in Rwanda. He says that the targeted teachers are those in primary and lower secondary such as Senior one to three. ‘’We want to establish the level of professionalism to enhance the standard of facilitating learning. Many teachers have been called from various institutions to come and facilitate,” he said. The test was developed by REB with support of the USAID-funded Literacy, Language and Learning initiative and will be administered by REB-based teacher mentors. ‘’We need to establish different ways of supporting our teachers basing on the level at which they are,” Ntaganzwa said. After the tests, school-based teacher mentors will then set goals for every teacher to achieve during the year.
