The barriers to entry for new schools and university in Rwanda

      

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

3.   Education | UNICEF Rwanda

4.   Rwanda Ministry of Education (mineduc.gov.rw)