Free Education for All : first nine years basic education

February 12th 2010

Time seems to fly by. The Vancouver Olympics are starting. If I were at home, I would be settling in to watch my big screen TV. But I am in Rwanda, and I am working and it’s all quite stimulating.

This week I have been able to visit about half of the schools to see how the 140 student teachers are doing in their placements. One day, I took the college car with driver and visited some of the schools farther away. Yesterday I took a local bus for 15 min. and walked to 4 different schools all within a couple of kilometres from each other. This is a heavily Catholic part of the country with many of the schools being established and very well equipped. I take back my generalization about the Kavumu students’ English: many of the student teachers speak very well while others do appear to struggle. A few have confided to me that they believe their English is significantly better than the teachers of their placement school!

Since my departure in 2008, the government has extended free education to 9 years. Many of the primary schools have been enlarged from just P1-P6 by adding a 7^th and an 8^th year. These two years are now free and next year they will add a ninth year. What I still do not understand, is that the original boarding secondary schools (grades 7-12), still exist and as far as I can see students in years 7-9 are paying school fees. How is that for 2-tiered education! It seems that P6 students who receive high scores on the state exam are accepted into the boarding sec schools and pay. Those with lower scores go to the enlarged primary schools. I am still not 100% clear on this but one thing is for sure: more students are now moving on to secondary education than before.