The education sector has received more than its fair share of bashing in the local media for some time now, and most of the time the fair criticism has led to change for the better. But that was just window dressing. At the ongoing National Leadership Retreat (Umwiherero) education has been top of the agenda, and believe it or not things are more serious than we had been thinking - we were just scratching the surface. It was not only about the resignation of the immediate former State Minister for Primary and Secondary Education, who it turns out, sold his soul for pennies. He received Rwf500,000 (slightly more than $500) to give a poor performing school a clean bill of health. That was the epitome of cheapness and moral decay. But that is not all that ails our education system. A study commissioned by the Government found out that, if nothing was done urgently to reverse the worrying trend, only divine intervention will save the day. Both teachers and students are reading less and less. So what happens when the person people entrust their children to receive an education turns out to be not better than them, if not worse? Nothing explains that dilemma better than newly graduated students from the College of Education who sat a teaching exam and only 10 per cent managed to pass! It seems that the Higher Education Council (HEC) has been sleeping on the job. It needs to step in urgently and put in place stringent inspection measures and universities that fail to make the cut shut their doors. This country cannot afford to turn out half-baked manpower year in year out because a well-educated generation is this country’s only salvation.
