Rwanda Education Board (REB) is set to take over the process of recruiting and placing teachers in secondary and primary schools, which is currently done by districts. This, comes after the January 28 cabinet meeting approved the decision, saying was aimed at improving quality of education. Should the implementation plan get approved, teachers will start to be recruited by REB in the 2020 academic year. Irène Ndayambaje, the Director General of Rwanda Education Board, told The New Times that decentralising the process will improve coordination. He illustrated that, when a teacher submits a job application in three different districts, passes all the exams and gets selected for the job they will end up working in a district of their choice. When that happens, he said, the other districts will wait for the successful candidate to start work but in vein, which makes students wait for a long time without studying. The problem for districts, he explained, lies in the coordination of the recruitment process. “At the moment a teacher resigns from their duties it takes long to replace them and that affects the education process. This is all due to the lack of coordination in the recruitment process,” Ndayamabaje explained. He explained that REB will introduce a system to track all applications so as to ensure timely recruitment of new teachers as well as replace those who have left. “The system will help to track the teachers who already got jobs and those who are on the pending list for better coordinated placements,” he said. Donatha Mukamusama, the Head Teacher of Bunazi Primary School in Huye District, said that her school is the victim of an inefficient teacher recruitment process. She said they currently have a shortage of teachers. “The district was supposed to recruit two new teachers for our school by the beginning of the 2019 academic year, which they haven’t done yet. In the end, all the blame goes to the school when students’ performance is poor,” Mukamusama said. As a result, she noted, some teacher do double work to fill the void. Mukamusama said that the new recruitment system should consider placing teachers to schools near their homes, adding that REB should consider consulting teachers before implementing the system. editor@newtimesrwanda.com
