WESTERN PROVINCE RUBAVU — The Rubavu district education officer, Mediatrice Mwangange has said that the new Ministry of Education’s planned reforms will improve the education system in Rwanda. She was on Monday addressing parents, teachers and students in Gisenyi Sector on their role in the new reforms ahead of the new academic year that started on Monday January 12. “The new reforms were designed to help all Rwandan children have access to education. Some of these new reforms include studying in shifts where some pupils will attend classes in the morning and others in the evening to create space for all children since the number of school enrolment is expected to rise,” she explained. Mwangange explained that the reforms will translate into reduced lessons in order to promote specialisation. “Rwandan education syllabus had many subjects; with nine subjects for P.1 to P3 and 11 subjects for pupils from P.4 to P6. The new reforms which commenced with the new academic year will lead to a reduction of subjects to four from P.1 to P.3 and five for pupils from P.4 to P.6,” she said, adding that this will help children concentrate and master the few chosen subjects. Mwangange, said that this will also minimise shortage of teachers since the lessons will be fewer than in the past, noting that the Ministry’s goal is to reduce the teacher-pupil ratio from 74 to 45. “In the past academic years, many teachers were needed to cover many different subjects that were taught in schools. The new reform will have teacher’s work reduced, with focus shifting towards specialisation meaning that teachers will also have enough time to do research,” she said. The official said that the reduced work load will also help teachers get time to identify and discover weak pupils who need special attention. Teachers who talked to the New Times after the meeting welcomed the new reforms, saying it would simplify their scope of work. “We needed to be at the same level with the other East African Community member states where four major subjects, Science, Math, English and Social studies are done in primary schools,” said Joshua Mungwaneza, a teacher at Gisenyi School of Science. Ends
