The government, through Rwanda Basic Education Board (REB) has announced plans to reinforce the exercise of distributing laptops to teachers with officials saying that the target is to have all teachers in the country equipped with laptops by the year 2025. This is an important pronouncement especially coming at a time the education sector is undergoing a series of reforms with a view to put the student at the centre of the learning process through the Competence Based Curriculum that was launched about seven years ago. ALSO READ: All public school teachers in Rwanda to get laptops With the new curriculum, there is need for constant research by the educators to ensure they are abreast of what is happening elsewhere, a departure from the past where they relied on decades-old textbooks that ended up missing context or overtaken by events. The distribution of laptops to teachers, which has been ongoing for some time now, will also greatly complement the Smart Classroom initiative which is geared towards churning out a critical mass of innovators because a smart mindset starts with a teacher. It also complements other incentives that have been put in place to ensure schools retain the best quality of teachers because it creates a better work environment for teachers, some of whom were shunning the trade due lack of the same. However, the distribution of laptops should go hand in hand with efforts to train the teachers on how best to make the most of them to produce maximum results. Such training must be geared at for instance boosting their research capabilities. Secondly, this even makes an urgent case for speeding up the process to connect all schools to the internet because a laptop without internet will be as good as nothing both for the teachers and their learners. ALSO READ: Elon Musk’s Starlink to launch high-speed internet in Rwanda Fortunately, much has already been done in this regard, including the national fibre optic infrastructure that has docked in nearly all parts of the country to provide high speed internet. Additionally, a partnership was recently announced to connect remote schools to the internet using Starlink, a satellite internet constellation operated by American aerospace company SpaceX.
