The Rwanda Education Board (REB) said it would restart national recruitment of primary and secondary education teachers before the next academic year scheduled to take place in September 2020.
The Latest Coronavirus that had affected many services since March this year had not spared education; recruitment had been put on hold.
The teacher’s recruitment plan for 2020-2021 will be the largest ever, with 7,214 new staff needed, according to the REB.
The recruitment aims to overcome the student-teacher gap in Primary at 59:1 and in Secondary at 29:1.
“The government is building new classrooms, and of course, we need teachers too. We are waiting for the government to advise us on how the exercise should resume,” Dr. Irenee Ndayambaje, Director General of Rwanda Education Board (REB) said.
“The recruitment exercise was halted from the application processes, we shall resume it, verify teachers’ qualification documents, and start their placements in schools before September.”
3,799 teachers will go to primary school in this scheme, 3,417 will go to high school and 386 teachers will be recruited for technical and vocational education (TVET) schools.
The recruitment was originally a district job but that amount has never been achieved.
There are 2,479,366 students in primary schools in Rwanda, and 636,162 in high schools. But this number is expected to rise as the schools reopen in September 2020.
According to the Ministry of Education the country has 41,573 teaching staff in primary schools and 21,990 teaching staff in public high schools.
“We expect a much bigger number of students as schools reopen in September, some children will start school for the first time. But they should already find teachers and classrooms, these are simultaneous.” Dr. Ndayambaje said.
The government has begun building 22,505 classrooms for primary , secondary, and vocational institutions to improve the student – teacher ratio.
A cabinet meeting chaired by President Paul Kagame last year, January 28, approved a 10 percent increase for teachers’ salaries.
Increased a primary teacher salary to Rwf46, 400 from Rwf41,573 and a secondary teacher now receives Rwf137,000 from Rwf125,000 monthly salary.