Generally speaking, there are different
challenges that end up becoming barriers towards the entry of new schools and
university in Rwanda and among these challenges we find but no limited to;
Starting a new school or university
requires lots of investments in terms of infrastructures, and other facilities
to meet the minimum requirements set by the ministry of education.
It is also hard to find qualified teachers
and lectures in Rwanda who meets the standards as per the ministry of education
requirements; most of competent ones are already hired by other similar
institutions not willing to share their human resources.
The low capacity of students towards
paying the school fees is also another issue, as many schools or universities
finds unattractive to invest in, for re-paying the bank loans, or getting
interest is way difficult because most of the students don’t have the means to
pay the school fees and other school requirements.
Among other challenges which may act as
barriers to the entry of new schools and universities in Rwanda, relates to the
challenges often meet while the schools or universities have already started
operating and this most of the time leads to the closure of some of those
institutions, among them we find;
Time insufficiency, where the
teachers spend long hours at work and teachers’ lack of assigned time to
prepare classes can negatively impact on their interaction with students. In
Rwanda, teachers are required to teach eight hours a day; i.e. 40 hours a week
and complain to not having time for other classroom related activities such as
lesson planning, marking, reporting, etc. It is difficult to expect quality
education if teachers do not have adequate time to collaborate and reflect on
their work.
Lack of teacher motivation; it is
well known that well trained and motivated teachers are likely to boost
effective students’ learning and performance. But that teacher motivation is
affected by low salaries and frustrating teaching and learning conditions,
which is the case in Rwanda. Teacher motivation survey conducted in Rwanda by
the World Bank revealed that teachers are becoming increasingly concerned about
poor job satisfaction and low motivation.
Lack of in-service professional
development; to be effective, teachers need to continually expand their
knowledge and skills in order to address students’ learning challenges.
Unfortunately, not all teachers benefit from such exposure because of their big
number coupled with limited funds allocated to professional development
programs.
In the same line, significant proportion
of teacher educators does not engage regularly in professional development.
Yet, educators who are not regularly exposed to continuous professional
development do not improve their knowledge and skills; hence student learning
suffers. A Partner in Education also found that Rwandan teachers are not
receiving the in-service trainings required.
Lack of readiness to learn, as researches
show that the lack of learners’ readiness takes many forms and is most commonly
related to cognitive, physical, language and literacy development, emotional
stability, self-efficacy and self- esteem, motivation, prior knowledge, and
attitudes towards school and learning. Health-related factors such as hunger,
physical and emotional abuse, and chronic illness can lead to poor school
performance.
Health-risk behaviors such as early sexual
initiation, violence, and physical inactivity are consistently linked to poor
grades and lower educational attainment. Students who haven’t eaten nutritious
meals have trouble concentrating in class and students who suffer from mental
health issues can act out in ways that hinder their development and disrupt the
learning of their classmates (University).
Overcrowded classrooms, children learn
better and teachers are more effective in smaller classes. Unfortunately, it
has become almost impossible for the teacher to render individual pupil
attention due to big class size. Consequently, Cue so notes that students’
academic achievement and performance are lowered.
In these classes, management of problems
reduces teachers’ time, the intended content is not completed, and learners’
time to concentrate and complete a given task is reduced. Indeed, overcrowded
classrooms have a great impact on students’ involvement in learning. This turns
into a lack of motivation to try to do 58 Rwandan Journal of Education, well,
which limits student achievement where some students may begin to not care
about doing homework, passing tests and moving up to the next grade.
In Rwanda, teachers and learners are still
experiencing the challenge of large classes though with the introduction of
9YBE program, one of the targets was to reduce pupil: teacher ratio from 70:1
to 45. Unfortunately, according to 2017 Ministry of Education statistics, the pupils:
teacher ratio in primary education was 58 while it was 26 in secondary
(MINEDUC, 2018).
As conclusion, though the education sector
hold a big part of the government’s budget, though there more learners
(customers) who needs that service, investing in this sector is very risky as
due to the afore mentioned factors, and different obstacles still hinders its
development, both though such challenges are existing a lot have been made by
the government to facilitate private investors and foreign institutions to
invest in that field.
References
1.
Education in Rwanda - Wikipedia
2.
Challenges facing Education sector
in Rwanda | Fortune of Africa Rwanda
I believe that despite the present challenges, Rwanda will Keep on innovating and bringing out solutions to the current issues in education and that the quality of education that we have achieved will keep being on the rise.
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