Ministry of Education to establish Leadership College

The Ministry of Education is in talks with the governments of the United Kingdom and Belgium for the establishment of a School Leadership College in Rwanda. The school will be instrumental in equipping head teachers, deputy head teachers, school bursars and secretaries of secondary schools, with skills to manage a school. Speaking to The New Times yesterday, the Executive Secretary of the Teacher Service Commission (TSC) Emmanuel Muvunyi said that a delegation of officials from the Ministry last week visited the two European countries for talks. “We visited various institutions in Belgium and the UK to benchmark the best practices in the areas of school management and leadership,” Muvunyi said. He noted that the process to establish the school would be preceded by the establishment of a department within the existing teacher training system to offer school leadership skills. This will be done as part of the in-service education and training. “In the long run, we aim to establish a National College of School leadership.” Edward Nizeyimana, the headmaster of Groupe Scolaire Kagugu, said that they have a number of challenges that need impartation of leadership skills. “Prominent among the challenges we face as school head teachers is financial management. Many of us don’t have those skills which in turn lead to poor management of our schools,” Nizeyimana said. He also singled out the issue of some schools having many students that are difficult to manage. “We still have big numbers of students in our schools and yet we ought to manage them well so as to produce the best quality,” he said, adding that school leaders also need to be equipped with latest human resource techniques to help manage and develop their staff. Since 2003, the Ministry of Education has been running a school management programme in cooperation with VVOB, a Belgian organisation. The training covered school administration, finance, planning, ICT among others. For the past seven years, 1,282 head teachers, 458 deputy head teachers, 578 school bursars, 587 secretaries, in charge of academics and over 571 other school staff has benefited. Ends