Education is one of the ministries that saw a clean sweep during last month’s cabinet reshuffle with three new faces coming in hoping to tackle issues that have dogged the sector for so long.

Valentine Uwamariya became the latest on a long list of people who have occupied the position of the Minister of Education in recent years. She replaced Eugene Mutimura who held the position for slightly over two years.

Gaspard Twagirayezu was appointed the Minister of State in charge of Primary and Secondary Education, replacing Isaac Munyakaazi, who had earlier resigned in the wake of a corruption-related scandal.

The reshuffle also saw the creation of a new position of Minister of State in the same ministry. Claudette Irere was named as the Minister of State in charge of ICT and TVET Education, making Education one of only two ministries with three cabinet-level officials, the other being that of Finance and Economic Planning.

The timing of the reshuffle, and particularly the changes at the Kacyiru-based ministry, would not have gone unnoticed.

It came hot on the heels of the 17th National Leadership Retreat, or Umwiherero, during which quality of the country’s education system and its implications on the national development agenda was one of the key items on the agenda.

Indeed, when the Prime Minister’s Office subsequently published the resolutions of the high-level annual meeting, some of the biggest decisions were about education, including termination of automatic student promotion, and increasing the number of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) centres and to devise a strategy to make them more accessible and affordable.

All this came on the back of years of inconsistent and often-costly education policies blamed for endless questions about the quality of graduates.

So, will the new line-up of cabinet ministers at the helm of the country’s education system reverse the trend and truly fix issues that continue to undermine public trust in Rwanda’s education?

With the help of experts in the field, The New Times looks at 5 of the most pressing challenges that the new officials will be expected to attend to if they are to turn things around:

1.   Consultation on policies

Zulfat Mukarubega, the founder and legal representative, University of Tourism and Business (UTB), is of the view that there is little-to-no collaboration among policy-makers and institutions in the education sector.

"I think the first thing that should be changed is the idea of policy-makers not consulting different institutions and stakeholders before adopting any policy,” she said. "This has proven to be costly and led to inconsistencies and sudden policy reversals.”

She gave the example of the decision to use Kinyarwanda as the medium of instruction in lower primary schools, which attracted widespread criticism, especially "because there had not been consultation with particularly teachers and parents.”

Subsequently, the decision was reversed.

"I believe that if appropriate consultation had been conducted among all stakeholders we’d not have had the controversy the policy caused and a more appropriate policy would have been devised.”

The Education Ministry, said Maurice Twahirwa, the head teacher at APADET School, will need to streamline its policies to ensure consistent results and accountability.

The scandal that was unearthed in the upper echelons of the sector, he said, was damaging.

"There is need to restore public trust,” he said. This was in reference to revelations that the former State Minister for Primary and Secondary Education Isaac Munyakazi had allegedly taken a bribe of Rwf500, 000 from a school in exchange for favourable ranking in national examination results.

Ranking schools had previously been suspended in a move officials said aimed at discouraging cheating and other unfair competition practices, and it has again been scrapped in the wake of the scandal.

 2. Enforcement of standards

Mukarubega pointed out that there is need to ensure that all higher learning institutions have qualified staff, a challenge that has, over the years, undermined the quality of education offered at the tertiary level.

Quality of education emerged as a major issue at the 2020 Umwiherero, with senior government officials saying that tertiary institutions that fall short of the standards should be dealt with accordingly.

It’s an issue that drew the attention of President Paul Kagame himself, who was quoted as saying, "it’s not about how many universities you have, it’s about what they give you. Most universities don’t qualify to be universities. Some of these universities are just spoiling for us. How can we even fail to meet the average standards of Sub-Saharan Africa?”

It also emerged that most of the fresh education graduates recently failed their recruitment exams which prospective teachers normally sit before deployment.

Speaking at the retreat, Paula Ingabire, the Minister for ICT and Innovation, cited damning findings from a recent study commissioned by the Government to ascertain the existing gaps in the country’s education system.

Some of the major issues that emerged from the study were lows of cognitive ability and comprehension by Rwandan students.

"In Rwanda, a student reads 23 words per minute on average. The global average is 60 words,” she said. "A teacher in Rwanda reads only 90 words per minute compared to the global average of 120 words.”

She said, "We should now be thinking about the kind of questions we ask students that help them grow their cognitive ability,” she said.

3. Fixing the funding gap, especially for TVET and tertiary education

Generally, there is a funding challenge across the education sector. This means that schools can hardly provide the necessary training equipment or other necessary tools. Stephen Mugisha, an education expert, underlined the need for increased resources especially in the form of textbooks, infrastructure, and capacity-building.

"The firstborn of teaching and learning is resources. Without enough resources the system can hardly reach its goal of providing quality education,” he noted.

In the current fiscal year, the Government allocated Rwf310 billion to education, handing the sector the second-biggest slice of the national cake after infrastructure (Rwf551.1 billion).

On her part, Mukarubega said technical higher education is expensive yet investors are generally reluctant to put in their money.

"There are 29 private universities in the country but very few of them fall in the category of technical institutions,” she noted. "This shows that our system is still enormously paper-based, which contradicts with the country’s vision of digitally driving the sector.”

A study published last year indicated that TVET graduates were taking longer to get jobs than previously while their skills were generally found wanting. Budgetary allocations for TVET have been shrinking in recent years and one education expert who spoke to The New Times said that authorities should consider a new tax levy to complement government funding for the education sector. "There are countries that have done this and it has helped them significantly,” he said, citing Mauritius, South Africa and Tanzania. An independent commission would be created to manage the fund, he said.

4. Linkage between training institutions and the labour market

An educationist who has served as a private TVET provider for a number of years told The New Times on condition of anonymity that there is a "very low linkage the private sector and training institutions”. He said that the informal sector by far dominates the country’s private sector, limiting the number of opportunities for TVET graduates largely because of resource constraints. He said to help address this challenge, there is need to embrace what he called dual practicals (a student juggling between studies and work), "which would benefit all parties involved.” "This allows the student to acquire the necessary hands-on skills in the labour market and would subsequently help tackle the issue of unemployment.”

 5. Policy implementation and consistency

The new team, observed Mugisha, "should ensure that policies are not just announced but are rather implemented to the letter.”

"We have had a number of very good policies that end up in meetings, we want to see the actual implementation of all the good policies that come up, and then challenges regarding the policies can be examined gradually in order to make the necessary adjustments.

"But the idea of not implementing policies or resolutions should really come to an end.” This has been another sticking issue. For instance, the new competency-based curriculum was rolled out in 2016, but it took a few years before it could be implemented in many schools. In some cases, textbooks were sent to schools but did not arrive.

Several other policies, including on the issue of medium of instruction, were devised only to be discontinued years later before they had been enforced.

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What the public thinks

Vanessa Gakuba Rutazibizwa, a student tutor and a businesswoman

There is need to improve on coordination among policymakers and administration of learning institutions and parents. If you have noticed, a number of the challenges facing the education sector are as a result of poor coordination. This, in most cases, leads to lack of clarity in policy orientation, and weak implementation.

Secondly, from a lady’s point of view, I would expect more initiatives that aim at increasing the proportion of girls in science and technology streams.

Yvette Mukamwiza, Miss Career Africa

I would like to see more career guidance programmes in all schools. Students should be encouraged to choose their career paths. This allows learners to love what they are doing. It can also contribute to the quality of graduates produced by higher learning institutions.

Justus Mutabazi, student

I believe that in order to scale up impact in the education sector, there should be a shift towards focusing on learning outcomes per student.

Much as there has been adequate focus on universal access to education, quality of learning by an individual student has continued to lag behind.

Rosette Mutesi, a parent

Personally, I would like to see the quality of education in nursery and pre-nursery centres improve.

For example, we should see an increase in the number of caregivers at that level. We know that education is a journey and therefore our children should be able to climb this ladder starting with a good foundation.

These people also assist and support the child’s cognitive, emotional, physical and social development in the absence of a parent.  Therefore, the new education leadership and other stakeholders should put more efforts in ensuring that children enter the primary section on the back on a strong foundation.