Rwanda is celebrated for being the only low income country to have achieved fast progress towards its nationally set target on upper secondary completion for 2030, according to a new report. The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) report published on Tuesday, January 24, to mark International Education Day, shows which countries are on track to reach their intermediate education targets, that they set for 2025, on their way to the 2030 deadline for the global education goal (SDG4). In the report, Rwanda is also celebrated for fast progress in the participation rate of children in early childhood education, alongside other low-income countries such as Burkina Faso, Burundi, Guinea, and Sierra Leone. With an aim of holding the global community to account for the commitments they made to education progress by 2030, the report is centred on Sustainable Development Goal four whose aim is to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.” The national SDG 4 benchmarks that countries, including Rwanda, committed to achieving by 2025 and 2030 are; learning proficiency, completion rate, out-of-school rate, participation in pre-primary learning, the proportion of teachers with the minimum required qualifications, and the government expenditure on education. Manos Antoninis, Director of the report told The New Times that after the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi, Rwanda is catching up on education. He added: “The Rwandan government is taking education seriously, and that is demonstrated in many different ways. “For instance, it may not be specifically relevant to these two indicators of early childhood and upper secondary education, but it is very interesting that the government is preparing a new strategy on foundation learning, ensuring that children in the first years of primary school achieve the minimum proficiency in reading and in mathematics.” The report, however, shows that barely one in three countries are on track to reach the targets on pre-primary education and upper secondary completion. The report’s findings are meant to help countries draw policy recommendations to meet ambitious goals for quality education in line with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It recommends three policies – on legislation, regulation and financing – to help countries get on track with their ambitions on pre-primary education. On legislating, the report reads: “Offer free and compulsory pre-primary education. Countries which guarantee at least one year of free education, have higher participation rates.” On regulation, the report recommends that governments must regulate private providers in pre-primary education to ensure quality and equity. “Subsidized tuition fees for specific population groups can increase participation in pre-primary education by 13 percentage points,” it adds. For finance, it states that spending on publicly provided pre-primary education increases enrolment. Doubling spending from 0.25 to 0.50 of GDP triples participation rates from 20 percent to 60 percent on average, it is noted. Antoninis said: “Sometimes, there are countries that do not spend enough and yet achieve good results. It indicates that what they spend, they are very efficient. It may be falling short, but not much shorter than the minimum. “What we also know is that Rwanda is efficient in how it utilises external assistance. The amount of money is very important, but sometimes, it is just as important how you spend resources and the results. Rwanda is very effective in that respect.” The report also notes that half of the countries have no data on mathematics learning levels or the percentage of trained teachers in primary schools. A third have no data on completion or out-of-school rates.
