A total of 3,200 head teachers from public and government-aided primary schools will undergo a one-year Continuing Professional Development (CPD) course that will be hosted at the nearest Teacher Training College (TTC) in their districts. The training will be conducted through the partnership between the Ministry of Education, Rwanda Basic Education Board, the University of Rwanda, College of Education (UR-CE) and Building Learning Foundations (BLF). The CPD certificate course was launched on Friday July 2. Alphonse Uworwabayeho, Head of CPD at UR-CE, said, the learning course will be delivered through virtual and face to face sessions and head teachers will access their learning materials through the University of Rwanda Moodle System using their computers or smart phones. “This is a great opportunity for Rwandan head teachers to learn and improve how they lead their schools, the teachers will be given curriculum-based activities, share experiences with each other and their tutors, and at the end of the course they will be awarded certificates from the University of Rwanda” he added. Jean Pierre Mugiraneza, the Lead of Leadership for Learning at BLF, said the organisation has provided each head teacher with a smart phone and internet connection to be used during the course. The course is the third of the three stages of the CPD programme that was developed to provide all head teachers with the knowledge, skills and competence to drive school improvement in their own schools, while supporting improvements in learning in all schools including other schools too. “Sometimes you find that the same schools in the same sector are performing differently, some very well and others really poor, we want these head teachers from different schools to share, interact and help each other through this programme so that no school is left behind , but all schools thrive together. “We focused on them because primary school is the foundation of learning; we want to equip these head teachers with a strong foundation so they improve their primary schools which will in turn benefit pupils at an early stage,” he said. Scolastique Uwineza, the headmistress of Groupe Scolaire Nemba in Gakenke District who completed a recent stage of the CPD programme and will be helping others in this new programme said she learnt to focus on how teachers, asses, teach, and follow up the pupils. “As a head teacher I used to focus on other things like the general management and other logistics of the school and ignore the important thing that is teaching and helping my teachers follow up on pupils, but now we do general assessment and follow up on pupils’ performance regularly, help the ones doing poorly and make sure the ones on top do not decline, and this has really improved the overall performance of my school” she said “Learning is a continuous process; I think this new programme will help me a lot like the previous one did, and teach me many things, I will share all the tips I learnt with my fellow head teachers because pupils are our priority and we always want to learn new things so we can better improve their learning process,” Uwineza added. Since 2018, Building Learning Foundations in collaboration with UR-CE and REB organized and delivered a CPD certificate course to 473 head teachers known as leaders of learning and a CPD diploma course for 122 system leaders of learning in 2020.All these courses have been concluded.
