Innovative projects in education to receive funding

Initiatives by the private sector, local or international organisations that will be identified as being beneficial and successful in promoting the quality of education, will be funded by a UK aid fund project in collaboration with the Rwandan government.The three year project to be launched on Tuesday aims at assessing the effectiveness of new innovations in improving the quality of education.The head of the project, Marc Van der Stouwe, told The Sunday Times that the project dubbed “Innovation For Education”, will use about 10 million pounds in the exercise.“We welcome all applications but there will be a vetting exercise to determine the effectiveness of the projects,” Stouwe said.“Of course not every innovation will work out or be successful, but this does not mean that we shall terminate contracts with such projects since we also believe that we can learn from failure, A contract will only be terminated if terms are not respected, like giving reports or failure to account for funds”. The minimum financial support will amount to 50,000 pounds and 800,000 pounds will be the ceiling. Claver Yisa, the Policy and Institutional Development Adviser, said beneficiaries will include those that address challenges experienced in the education system as well as others that operate in line with promoting ICT in education.“We shall have monitoring and evaluation exercises to check on the progress of each project,” he said.Bernedette Muteteri, the Grants Manager is optimistic the initiative will bring about more new innovations in the education sector. She explained that projects that will prove effective can also be integrated or receive extra attention by the government in order to be promoted further.