The ministry of education has finished phase one of the new teacher’s recruitment and placement, an exercise that was recently messed up, leading to the suspension of senior officials at Rwanda Education Board(REB) last month.
The placement involved 3,732 for Pre-primary and Primary teachers compared to the required 18,039 teachers, meaning 14,307 are still needed in the nex phases.
In the secondary schools, 2,673 teachers have been placed in their respective schools compared to the required 6,371. This means that other 3,698 teachers are still needed.
For the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) 336 teachers have also been placed in respective schools where they applied to teach.
Teachers writing recruitment exams
This brings the number of teachers who recently obtained a job to 6,741 in pre and primary schools, secondary and TVET schools.
“The teacher’s placement delayed, but it has been successfully finished. Teachers were placed depending on the schools they requested to teach and their respective districts. We are able to correct past mistakes,” Dr. Valentine Uwamariya, Minister of Education said.
“This new cohort will be ready to welcome the second phase of students who will start school next week.”
Next week, primary four and secondary students from senior one, two, and four will resume their studies across the country. Other levels reopened the door on November 2, closing a 7 month interruption that was imposed by the need to prevent the spread of COVID-19 since March this year.
Meanwhile, in the recruitment exams-July 85% of the teachers who wrote the recruitement exams failed. The pass mark was 70%.
As schools gradually reopen, the country is building 22,500 new classrooms to make sure that during the education new normal, the ratio of students to teachers would be on acceptable standards.
To reduce the student-teacher ratio, the government needs to recruit about 29,000 teachers after the reopening of all schools.
The student-teacher ratio stands at 59:1 in Primary and 29:1 in Secondary or 46:1 average in both levels.
