Rwanda’s mid-term and long term goals and ambitions are to a great extent dependent on the quality of human capital being developed currently and in the near future. In 2018, a World Bank index on human capital, gave Rwanda 38 per cent; meaning that a Rwandan child can be estimated to be 38 per cent productive as they can be if they had full basic education and health services. This reveals that there is more effort required to prepare young Rwandans for better learning outcomes to be relevant within the local, regional and international ecosystem. Among key gaps that continue to emerge include the rates of malnutrition for young children which influences their ability to learn. While there has been significant progress to curb the challenge, much work remains to be done. Over the years, the country has made remarkable progress in aspects such as adult survival and reducing maternal mortality rates, but rates of malnutrition and the resultant stunting remain of concern in vulnerable households. Learning outcomes have also been severely affected by quality of education which is influenced by factors such as quality of teachers, teacher-student ratios and education infrastructure. During the slowdown caused by the pandemic, the government made the most of the time to address infrastructure gaps by constructing over 20,000 classrooms to improve education access and teacher student ratio. The ratio currently stands at 57:1. This week, the Prime Minister’s Office suspended top administrators at Rwanda Education Board for failure to co-ordinate the ongoing teacher recruitment process. The administrators were said to have failed to implement recruitment of more than 7,000 teachers to improve the student to teacher ratio. Even when more teachers are recruited, there will still be much more to be done in the short term and the medium term. This will include constantly adjusting the education curriculum to ensure that it responds to the market demands and that learners are prepared not only to be relevant locally but competitive globally. For learning outcomes to improve, efforts will be needed not only in basic education but also at tertiary levels such as in colleges. This too will require adjustment to be fit for purpose. The path to improve learning outcomes is too broad and covers multiple aspects requiring input from diverse stakeholders. Improvement of learning outcomes is not only dependent on formal education set ups but also social economic welfare to adjust aspects such as child nutrition, students’ retention in school. The resumption of schools and learners having more spacious classrooms, is not the end but rather a great start of the journey requiring much flexibility to ensure that the long term goals of the country are attainable.
