Kigali 17^th July 2019 – ‘’The main importance of this consultative workshop is to gather ideas and get a deep understanding of the gaps that our secondary school teachers have in teaching and learning. We have really got good contribution from the audience and we hope that it will contribute to the strategy that we will come up with in collaboration with Rwanda Education Board and Common Wealth of Learning’’.

This was said by Emmanuel Murenzi, the Inspire, Educate and Empower Rwanda (IEE) Country Director while officially closing the two-day education stakeholders consultative workshop on the Teacher Futures-Rwanda Programme. This programme will be funded by the Common Wealth of Learning (COL), which is coming into the Rwandan education space to complement efforts of the Ministry of Education (MINEDUC) and Rwanda Education Board (REB) in basic education. Teacher Futures- Rwanda is a COL blended programme which utilises both online and face-to-face in-service teacher training.  

The Head of the Teacher Development and Management & Career Guidance and Counselling Department at REB, Mr James Ngoga who presided over the opening session, said that the country had made tremendous progress in education over the last few years, the most recent of which was the move from skills to competency-based curricula in the basic education cycle and pre-service teacher education. 

“With the right curricula, having quality teachers to deliver it is on our agenda more than ever before. We are therefore excited that COL is coming in at this critical time to complement our efforts in teacher development,” said Mr Ngoga.

Teacher Futures- Rwanda is an upcoming education partnership between COL and MINEDUC, to be implemented by REB and facilitated by IEE in Implementing Partner capacity. Teacher Futures- Rwanda is aimed at supporting and empowering in-service secondary school teachers for effective professional development, for better teaching and learning.

Teacher Futures- Rwanda will offer a range of opportunities because participating teachers will also have opportunities to do online certification courses which will increase their knowledge, skills and capacities for effective teaching, hence increased quality of education. 

On how the Teacher Futures-Rwanda programme will work, Emmanuel says that with the support of COL, IEE will partner with REB and other education development partners to make effective use of this programme hence benefiting all the secondary school teachers in Rwanda.

We intend to work closely with government and other education development partners who also support in-service teacher development programs to ensure we support Rwandan teachers to improve their teaching skills, hence supporting learner achievement of learning outcomes– Noted Emmanuel.

Mwanangu Theophile is the District Director of Education in Kirehe district in Eastern Rwanda. He participated in this workshop and according to him, this programme is timely.

This program is very important since it is aimed at building teacher capacities to deliver teaching and learning. No doubt if teacher skills are improved, we can produce learners who will be able to compete on the international labour market- He said.

This workshop jointly facilitated by REB and IEE was attended by a range of participants ranging from MINEDUC and REB officials, representatives of major development agencies in teacher development including UNICEF, Flemish Association for Development Cooperation and Technical Assistance, Building Learning Foundations and the Wellspring Foundation for Education. Also participating were sector education inspectors, lecturers from the University of Rwanda College of Education, selected school head teachers, school directors of studies and teachers. The workshop was aimed at scoping the in-service teacher development landscape, to determine how the Teacher Futures-Rwanda programme gets effectively designed to complement existing efforts by government and partners.

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