Secondary schools to receive computers from REB

AT LEAST 103 secondary schools operating under 12 Year Basic Education government programme are set to receive ten computers each according to officials from Rwanda Education Board (REB) has said. The initiative is in line with promoting ICT in schools as one of the strategies expected to improve students` research capacity thereby improving performance.Dr. Evode Mukama, the head of ICT in Education department at REB said that the programme will first benefit at least four schools in each district across the nation. “We have already developed how this programme will be implemented and our next plan is to ensure that there is power in these schools to avoid donating computers which will not be used by the students,” he said.He explained that this programme will give out 1320 computers and that the procurement exercise is almost complete. The development comes shortly after REB designing a programme that will see 3,200 teachers who completed a one-year ICT training course last year being deployed in various schools to train other teachers.Mukama said that in the various schools these teachers are to operate from, they will be charged with the responsibility to train other teachers from their respective schools. Officials say that this will promote and build teachers capacity to teach computer skills or ICT; and that schools will have a similar ICT teaching mechanisms.This is the latest initiative REB has taken after the launch of a five-year massive literacy awareness campaign last year. It aims at promoting and building population`s capacity and knowledge in ICT.Meanwhile, REB has also developed a system that will identify and plan for future investment in making sure that schools are capable of handling or teaching ICT.The programme dubbed Geography Information System will basically focus on infrastructure development of schools as well as distance from one school to another. “This will give us future plans or mechanisms we can come up with in making sure that, schools in Rwanda can easily offer ICT studies among others,” he said.As part of this programme, fourteen officials from both REB and the Ministry of Education completed a two weeks training in various studies related to the programme.These officials will also train others to have a big number that will take on the task across the country.