KIE students to resume studies

Seventy-three students of Kigali Institute of Education, who had been discontinued, will now resume studies after the Ministry of Education came to their rescue. The students were discontinued last year, one month after they were granted a scholarship by the Rwanda Education Board (REB), to study secretarial studies at KIE. According to a communiqué from the school to the students, REB released a second list comprising only 30 students out of 103 who had scored 50 marks out of 60, who were to be granted scholarship. The rest, according to the statement, would pay as private students or lose the chance to study at KIE. The first list of 103 students had been sanctioned by Workforce Development Authority (WDA) on November 26, 2012 but forwarded to KIE by REB . This meant the 73 students, most from poor backgrounds, had to leave the school premises. According to Prof. Wenceslas Nzabarirwa, the vice rector in charge of academic affairs at KIE, the problem was not for the school to sort out, since they received students who were under REB. REB cited financial constraints. “We looked at our budget and found we could only afford to pay for 30 students,” explained John Rutayisire, the director general of REB. That is how the victims, who had scored 45 marks out of 60, approached the Ministry of Education to solve their fate. On Friday, education minister Vincent Biruta met with the affected students and told them to go back to school since he was not aware of the issue. Minister Biruta said he would contact REB and KIE to try and sort out the mess. On Monday, KIE got a memo from REB that students have to resume studies because the problem had been solved. According to Rutayisire, there had been a problem of lack of communication. “We have discussed the issue with WDA and realised we would have consulted each other before coming up with the list of 103,” he said on Monday. “We started by granting the scholarships to those with higher scores and remained with more money so the rest can also be catered for.” Some of the affected students that The New Times spoke to said they were relieved the saga was over. “I cannot count how many times we went to Reb, WDA, and Mineduc after we were told we cannot continue studies,” said Claire Uwimana, one of the students. Her colleague, Valentine Uwimbabazi, said her parents cannot afford to pay for her tuition. “Most of us sold our property in order to find scholastic materials and we had started worrying about returning home without a valid reason to convince our parents why we are not going to study,” she said. By Seraphine Habimana

No more forgery of school reports

When software developer Jean-Pierre Habinshu­ti was one day walking around in the city center, he sudden­ly noticed a man filling in points on two blank primary school reports. When finished, the man gave them to a young man nearby for stamping. It was done in a matter of minutes. It made Habinshuti realize how easy it is to fake school reports, all the more so since they are printed on plain paper you can find in any stationery shop, and filled in with an ordinary pen. Forging a stamp and signature is not rocket science either. “That scared me, but it also gave me an idea that later became the project I’m working on right now,” says Habinshuti, who is currently working at the ICT incubation cen­ter kLab, to which you are admitted only when you can present a ‘vi­able project that society will benefit from.’ “After observing how easy it is to forge school documents, I re­alized that I should do something about it.” He created a web application called Unified School System (USS), a centralized system that will con­nect all primary and high schools in Rwanda to tackle the increasing forgery of school documents, im­prove student performance and en­gage parents in following up the ed­ucation of their children. Data – test and exam scores as well as students’ behavior – will be inputted by the school, stored into a server at the ministry of education, and then delivered instantly to the parents by e-mail or text message. The system also allows to print school reports with some security features – the paper will have a spe­cific watermark, and every report will have a unique serial number that can be tracked. Habinshuti started working on the project nearly three months ago, coding it in PHP whereas data is stored into MySQL databases. He deliberately chose these two open-source programming languages be­cause they are completely free. Being a web app, rather than desktop soft­ware, it will be universally accessible and relatively easy to maintain. “I presented the software to the ministry of education; they have ap­preciated it and approved both the design and user interface because it will help them standardize the plat­form – something they have been lacking. We have also sat down to­gether to apply the final tweaks. The software was thoroughly checked, debugged and is now almost ready for the public.” Being the first-ever IT commu­nity in Rwanda, kLab is an open space where IT entrepreneurs and designers meet to share ideas and skills. It hosts training sessions every Wednesday, which is where Habin­shuti learned the techniques to en­hance the navigability of the web app as well as security measures that must be taken to prevent the soft­ware from being hacked. The developer is confident that the ministry of education will adopt his system for the next academic year. He wants to offer it free of charge for the sake of marketing himself by building a solid résumé in software development in Rwanda. Focus

Umwalimu SACCO gets 5bn

The Minister of Education Dr Vincent Biruta has announced that the government has set aside Frw 5bn to Umwalimu SACCO in order to facilitate public teachers’ access to loans. According to Dr Biruta, the money set aside for the Sacco has been increased from Frw 574 million a year because the government wants teachers to develop and uplift their living conditions. The minister also said that the program will last for 10 years, and by then the government will have injected around Frw 30 billion in the finance institution. “We will be alternately putting in Frw 5bn and Frw 1bn as years flow.” Apart from the money put in SACCO, the interested rate for public teachers taking loans from the fund was reduced. “The interest rate was initially 14% , but now we have reduced it to 11% for those who ask for money to invest in profitable businesses, and 13% on non-profitable ones,” Dr Biruta said recently, adding that the new changes take effect immediately. “Even those who had already taken loans and not yet started to pay back will benefit from the reduced interest rates.” About 30,204 out of the 57,000 teachers countrywide have already taken loans from Mwalimu SACCO. “Projecting to five years from now we expect a 21,000 boost from the current numbers, and in 10 years, we should have achieved at least 50,000 teachers who will have got loans from the fund individually or in cooperatives. By then, we’ll have to turn to a self-reliant Mwalimu SACCO, with the government investing nothing,” Dr Biruta said. Focus

Are exams a do or die situation?

Anxiety, tension, wetting of the palms, panic and stomach upset. These usually greet candidates who sit for final examinations at the end of each level; these exams are popularly known as summative evaluation in the education circles. The hyper reaction of the body towards such circumstances is not only as a result of ill preparedness, as it is usually presumed. Even those who thoroughly prepare for the exams find themselves blank and nervous. They gaze at the grave quiet exam rooms and the two or 3 page colored or colorless examination question papers and wonder if all their years of labour, endurance of the biting morning and evening cold, let alone the money spent in school fees and upkeep, will come for naught by failing to answer just four questions after long toil and voluminous study. A student looks at a question paper and fails to comprehend how a slight error in responding to the question items will be life defining and modeling. Tension mounts in pursuit of perfection. The dry and scaring eye of the invigilator complicates the situation. In fact, the entire situation sounds like conspiracy to frustrate someone’s dreams. It is amazing how success in education has been so much pegged on obtaining the best grades in examinations. The grades from school stratify people and society. Excellence or failure earns one a social stamp that defines the stratum that he or she will belong to. Before we give a verdict whether passing examinations is the only key to success or it is success in itself, let’s consult authorities and see what they say about success. The Encarta dictionary defines success as the achievement of intention or something planned. This definition is on the same vein with success in examinations in a narrow view because passing examinations is triumph over a set task. Different people have varied views of what success means to them. The views are as varied and widespread as the dynamics of the human race. The poor will think having a lot of money will be an upward thrust to success while the rich count themselves successful if they get happiness. To avoid digressing very much let me get back to the point. Failure in school is not a failure in life. As long as literacy well above basic is attained one can always make it in life. This should not be misconstrued to mean that excellent school grades are of minimal or no consequence. NO. Those who obtain excellent grades have the kind of aptitude that will take them places. The view that I want to advance is the fact that failing in school is not a barricade to success. Many are the success stories of those who failed in school and colleges who can be regarded as successful by all the possible parameters of humanly measuring success. A new notion is needed in the view of success by the society. Pegging it all to national examinations puts students on a path that is way too difficult and perilous to tread; in fact, it is suicidal. Examinations are a mere measure of academic achievement. By Zachariah Mayaka Nyamosi

Cheaper loans for teachers

The Teachers Savings and Credit Co-operative, Umwalimu Sacco, has reduced its lending interest rate by three per cent to encourage members to apply for loans. The sacco has reduced its lending rate from 14 per cent to 11 per cent following government’s intervention to make loans affordable to teachers. A Cabinet meeting last week resolved to support the sacco and approved Rwf5 billion grant to boost its capital base. The sacco, which has 60,000 members and a capital base estimated at Rwf40 billion, lends Rwf14 billion per year, according to data available. Uplift social status of teachers The sacco’s director-general, Joseph Museruka, said the government pledged its support in a bid to uplift the social status of teachers, mainly those in public schools. “It was towards the end of last year that the government decided to increase their salary by 10 per cent, now they are being facilitated to access cheaper loans,” he said. Mr Museruka added that 18 per cent of the Rwf5 billion added to the sacco’s coffers would help teachers to access mortgages with a 15-year repayment period instead of five. The special credit facility will only benefit teachers in public schools and their counterparts in private schools, who will be charged 14 per cent interest, he added. Need to strengthen saccos While presenting this year’s budget statement in June, Finance Minister John Rwangombwa underscored the need to strengthen saccos, saying they had become an important instrument of economic and social transformation. He also announced that the government had allocated Rwf2.6 billion to provide technical assistance to saccos. Last year, the government launched a programme of donating one cow per teacher countrywide in order to motivate them. Ministry of Education reports indicate that 257,000 cows are given to teachers every year. The government expects to donated 700,000 cows by 2014. Motivated by government’s initiatives Catherine Uzamushaka, a beneficiary of the programme, said teachers have been motivated by government’s initiatives to uplift their standards of living. Mrs Uzamushakawho, a primary school teacher in Jali Sector, said teachers would donate calves when their cows deliver so as to ensure continuity of the programme. Meanwhile, the government early this year awarded A2 teachers a salary increment of 10 per cent. The Minister of Public Service and Labour, Mr Anastase Murekezi, said the teachers would get at least a 56 per cent salary increment over six years and other public workers between 25 per cent and 35 per cent over the same period. Rwanda Today

Secondary sch exams kick off

National examinations for Ordinary and Advanced levels of secondary education will commence this morning and conclude November 23. According to figures from the Rwanda Education Board (REB), 83,920 candidates are registered to sit for the O'level exams compared to 80,093 students who sat last year, representing a 4.8 percent increase. For Advanced level candidates, the number of candidates has increased from 31,734 last year to 33,806 this year. Meanwhile, the number of private students to sit A-level exams has decreased from 7,665 last year to 4,374 this year. Speaking to The New Times, the REB Deputy Director General in charge of Examinations and Accreditation, Emmanuel Muvunyi, said O' level candidates will sit the exams from 381 centres while 301 centres have been designated for Advanced level exams. He stressed that security has been tightened to minimise cheating. "The exams and materials were dispatched to districts on Sunday and we have held meetings with people in charge of security and exams at all levels," he said. He added that they have also reviewed regulations governing national examinations and given tips on how to handle examination materials at all centres. "We have strengthened our strategies to tackle cheating as past experiences have shown that cheating is common in secondary candidates" For A level students offering science subjects; chemistry, biology, and physics, 141 centres have been arranged for practical exams, he said. The candidates The New Time talked to in both levels expressed their readiness and optimism ahead of the examinations. However, some of those who are expected to do practical exams said they were not aware of the arrangements made for them adding they have not had enough exercises related to the exams. "We are aware we will sit for practical exams but not really ready as we are for theory. We didn't have enough practice and we don't know how the practical exams will be set as we normally revise questions of theoretical exams," said Clarisse Niyigena, a candidate of Mathematics, Physics and Geography combination at Ecole Secondaire Scientifique in Kigali City. The New Times

Fund attracts 40 education projects

The Ministry of Education and UK Aid Fund project is currently screening 39 proposals from education innovators who stand a chance of getting funding worth between Rwf 50m-Rwf 800m.  

The three years funding project that aims at improving the quality of education is focused on empowering new innovators in education.

“We received 150 projects that expressed interest and from that number, the vetting exercise shortlisted 41 projects that can help or contribute to the promotion of quality education,” said Marc Van der Stouwe, head of the project.

He explained that the 41 were then asked to submit their full proposals so that they can further be screened to select those that will be funded.

Only 39 finally submitted in their proposals.

Stouwe said that the first vetting exercise based on two major factors that included the capacity for applicants to implement what they had in their proposals and relevance and applicability in line with responding to the challenges the education system.

The project that will cost Rwf 10bn has capacity of providing financial support ranging from Rwf 50m to Rwf 800m depending on the size of the proposed project.

“In two weeks time, we shall have come up with the exact number of projects to fund, and we are sure that before end of the year, these projects will have signed contracts,” he said.

Implementations of the activities by the projects are expected to kick off in January next year.

Stouwe said that among other factors that heavily contribute to a project to qualify for funding is the monitoring mechanism in place to ensure that activities are implemented as per the proposals.

Although officials working on the project could not establish the actual number of projects that will be supported, it is expected that the number will be reduced.

The project`s policy and institutional development adviser, Claver Yisa, recently told The New Times that among others, projects dealing in promoting ICT stand more chances of benefiting from the fund.

He also said that monitoring and evaluation exercises will be conducted to check on the effectiveness and progress of each funded project.

By Susan Babijja