The Government plans to recruit at least 7,214 new professional teachers in the 2020 academic year in order to improve the teacher to student ratio and cater for the new classrooms being constructed to decongest existing ones, Rwanda Education Board (REB) has revealed.
The next academic year is slated to begin on January 6, 2020.
Dr Irénée Ndayambaje, the Director-General of REB, said: "This is the first time we recruit high number of teachers in one year in our education history.”
Under the recruitment plan, the government is looking for 3,799 primary school teachers, 3,415 secondary school teachers and an additional 386 teachers for TVET schools.
"The recruitment aims at reducing overcrowding in classrooms, phasing out double shift in primary four, improve the teacher to student ratio and avail teachers for new classrooms and schools,” he said.
Under what it calls the Rwanda quality basic education project, the ministry of education says that it will spend $126 million on the construction of 11,004 classrooms and 16,680 latrines to reduce overcrowding, a move that will require more teachers.
Currently, in primary school, one teacher caters for 59 students in primary school while it is one teacher per 26 students in secondary school, according to figures from the ministry of education.
There are currently 2,479,366 students in primary school and 636,162 students in secondary schools.
"Recruiting such high number of teachers will serve as basic data so that whenever a teacher abandons the profession, we immediately get the substitute without giving other exams,” he noted.
Unqualified teachers
The development also comes in the midst of fears that unqualified teachers will be phased out next year.
Ndayambaje confirmed that the list of unqualified teachers to be laid off has been prepared but declined to reveal the number of those who will be affected.
"We have prepared the list of all unqualified teachers and submitted it to the ministry of education…the decision is that those who don’t want to study education must quit the profession,” he said. "There will be guidance on that. We know the numbers. While they await the decision to be taken, they will be on duty as usual.”
Although he didn’t disclose the numbers, available statistics show that the country has 65,000 teachers whereby qualified teachers in primary schools account for 98.6 per cent while in secondary school they are 76 per cent.
Isaac Munyakazi, the State Minister in charge of Primary and Secondary Education previously told The New Times that all issues of unqualified teachers would be examined since the government wrote to Umwalimu Sacco requesting to facilitate teachers to get loans at low-interest rate so that they can enrol for degrees in education.
However, some teachers had earlier told The New Times that they were being denied access to loans from the SACCO, which affects their ability to upgrade their studies.
Indeed, Umwalimu SACCO was only willing to provide loans that could have been paid by December 2019 before the deadline to phase out unqualified teacher.
Retention challenges
Ndayambaje said they have committed to improving teacher management recruitment, retention, development and monitoring.
He explained that in order to prepare qualified teachers, the cabinet decision of January 28, 2019, approved the policy to strengthen the quality of Teacher Training Colleges (TTCs) and demonstration schools.
The ministry says it is going to upgrade 16 Teacher Training Colleges to strengthen the preparation of new teachers and also upgrade 16 models schools and new ones to be constructed in UR-College of Education to support innovative instruction practices at the budget of $17.3 million.
In March 2019 the Government also increased teachers’ salaries by 10 per cent in public schools and government-aided schools as part of the incentives to retain them in the profession.