Problem Definition – Teachers Professional Development in
the area of ICT in Education
1.
Background:
As of 2008, the education system in Rwanda comprised of 3 levels: Primary (classes 1 to
6), Secondary (classes 7 to 12) and Tertiary Education.
From the academic year 2009, the primary schools have been converted into 9 year basic
education wherein the existing primary schools have been advised to accommodate the
class 7 students for the year 2009. Over a period of next 2-3 years time, the plan is to
build adequate physical infrastructure at the primary schools and make it as Basic
Education Schools which will cater to P1-P9. Where the physical infrastructure is a really
challenge and the students strength is more, the MINEDUC has advised those schools to
operate with dual shift. Unfortunately, the teachers have not been increased in these
schools hence it’s obvious that the teachers are overloaded in these schools.
The existing secondary schools which use to cater to S1-S6 i.e., classes 7-12 till last year,
the focus has been changed to classes 10-12. During next three years period, it will be
streamlined to accommodate only S4-S6 i.e., classes 10-12. In addition, these schools
will also accommodate the Technical Vocational Education Training (TVET) program
which has been started from this year.
The most important policy change of the government is that the medium of instruction
from primary to secondary has been changed to English from the academic year 2009.
Earlier, the Kinya-rwanda was the medium of instruction in Primary and French / English
was the medium of instruction in secondary.
However, the Kinya-rwanda / English / French English will continue as first / second /
third language in the curriculum.
Therefore, the tremendous amount of capacity building is required for the teachers to
start using the English as medium of instruction. The efforts are on by the MINEDUC in
this direction in partnership with British Council for content as well as financial support.
Brief Indicators based on the 2007 statistics;
Population 9.2 million with the literacy level of 64.9%
45.3% of them are less than 15 years age group
39% of children complete 6 years of schooling
The net enrolment ratio in government secondary is 10% and in Tertiary is 1.7%
In primary; 2,370 schools, 2.2 Million children and 31,037 teachers with the pupil to
teach ratio (PTR) of 74:1
In Secondary; 643 schools, 0.266 Million students and 12,103 with the PTR of 22:1
The table below shows the number of children studying in each class along with the
average number of children per class.
Classes / Grades
Primary 1
Primary 2
Primary 3
Total No. of students
539,038
443,389
375,567
Average no. of students per class
227
187
158
Primary 4
Primary 5
Primary 6
Secondary 1
Secondary 2
Secondary 3
306,858
346,884
138,694
61,883
59,050
48,749
129
146
59
96
92
76
Note: No. of primary schools 2,370 and no. of Secondary schools 643
The private sector school has been encouraged to start the schools. The statistics above
does not include the students study in the private school.
2.
Teachers Professional Development:
a.
Pre-service:
In the present system, many of the primary school teachers are not professionally
trained teachers. There are 8 Teacher training institutions which has the “Diploma in
Teacher Training” program. The qualified student teachers are encouraged to apply for
the position of primary school teachers. The exposure to IT / ICT in Education for these
student teachers is very minimal since there is NO ICT facility in these institutions.
Similarly, for the secondary school, there are three institutions including Kigali Institute of
Education (KIE) and they have 4 years combined course of Bachelors Degree with
Bachelors in Education. The basic degree is either in arts or science. The qualified
teachers are eligible to teach in the secondary school based on their specialization.
As part of this 4 years education, the student teachers extensively use the IT for their
project work, documentation and communication. Unfortunately, there is NO defined
curriculum / focus on how to use the ICT tools in Teaching and Learning practices.
For all the pre-service teacher training institutions / programs, The KIE is the umbrella
institution which holds the overall responsibilities and it has been granted with university
status recently.
b.
In service Teacher Training Program:
For the past couple of years, MINEDUC is very particular on quality of intake including
the proper qualification of the teachers.
Once the teacher joins into the MINEDUC service, the ongoing capacity building efforts
entrusted with the Teacher Service Commission (TSC). The TSC uses the infrastructure
facilities of existing teacher training Institutions as well as cluster resource centre which
are located in the districts for the ongoing teacher’s capacity building programs.
Specific to the faculty for training the in service teachers, the TSC has identified set of
master trainers and they have been jointly involved in designing and implementing the
specific training programs along with other National Level Institutions.
Few years ago, TSC and KIE jointly developed an initiative to train the in-service teachers
through Open Distance Learning Program. Unfortunately, change in leadership at the
institutions level did not allow this initiative to be successful. The MINEDUC is looking
into the aspect very seriously to restart the ODeL program for the teachers.
The TSC has been predominantly focusing on the capacity building of the teachers who
have not been professionally trained. Specific to regular / on going capacity building, the
core focus (based on the policy change) is on building the English Language capacity of
the teachers, enhancement of academic and pedagogical techniques, classroom
management and building scientific temper among the students and basic IT literacy for
the teachers with the preference to the schools which have the ICT infrastructure.
The TSC works with various consultants for specific needs and in building the capacity
among the Teacher Educators. The expenses towards the teacher’s capacity building
programs are either supported by the project specific funding or through the sector
budget. The DFID and JICA are the lead development partners to support these
initiatives.
As part of the organization re-structuring, it is recommended that the TSC has to be a
semi autonomous institutions instead of one of the department in MINEDUC. The
recommendations have been submitted to cabinet. If cabinet approves, the TSC will
start functioning as semi autonomous institution and it will have financial independence
for implementing planned in service teacher training programs / initiatives.
3.
Teachers Capacity in the area of ICT based Teaching and Learning:
To train the in service teachers in the area of ICT in Education, the Teachers Service
Commission has partnered with Regional ICT Training Centre to train the teachers on
basic IT literacy as well as use of ICT as tool for teaching and learning practices. As of
now, the first phase of initiative i.e., basic IT literacy training program is implemented
fort the secondary school teachers with the priority where the ICT infrastructure has
been already deployed. The plan is to develop the formal curriculum for training of
teachers in the area of ICTs in Teaching and Learning.
As of now, the RITC has trained around 3,000 secondary teachers for the basic IT
literacy program using the Microsoft basic IT training module and the cost towards the
training program was sponsored by the Microsoft’s partners in learning program.
Specific to the OLPC project, around 100 primary school teachers have been trained on
how to operate the computers and the features of the same.
All the faculty members at RITC are science and engineering graduates and they do not
have the academic & pedagogic and classroom management experiences. Therefore, the
training is not really contextualized and related to school learning environment.
Therefore the effectiveness of the training program is an issue.
4.
Interactions with the Teachers:
Pre Service teachers; Most of the student teachers at KIE use the computers for
document preparation, project work and e-mails. Few students use the LCD projectors
and OHPs for their seminar classes. As part of the overall curriculum, there is a basic IT
literacy course is covered wherein the computer lab exposure is provided to the students
to learn basic applications.
In service Teachers; As part of the large scale capacity building initiative, the RITC has
been involved in training the in-service teachers in the area of basic IT literacy training
program. The Teacher Service Commission is keen to move on the next level of training
wherein they would like to build the skills and techniques among the teachers for use of
ICT as tool in teaching, learning and assessment practices.
Specific to the feedback from some of the teachers from secondary school;
 The 5 days training program by RITC was useful to understand the basics of
computers and at least there is NO fear in touching the computers, starting and
shutting down
 Some teachers use the computer lab for their personnel work which is related to
their continuing education
 Few teachers have been trained on hardware maintenance but they are not really
comfortable in doing the same
 Teachers would like to have the guidance manual and follow up school based
support and refresher training program for their continued skills enhancement
 Teachers are very keen to have the syllabus based e-learning content and also the
training on how to integrate the same
 They have expressed the challenges such as poor technical support, requirement of
additional ICT infrastructure such as TV and LCD projectors
 But overall teachers see lot of potential in using the ICT based support for
enhancement of quality of learning. They would like to have proper exposure to
leverage these tools effectively.
Interaction with the primary school teachers trained by RITC for OLPC project;
 Though officially the OLPC project launched during the previous academic year
during the third semester, the program implementation is still to take shape
 As of now, the primary schools are busy in focusing to upgrade to 9 year basic
education hence the OLPC units are stored in the school and it has not been used
since the commencement of academic year 2009.
 The teachers expressed that the real challenge is distribution and collection of the
OLPC units on daily basis. Though the MINEDUC encourage schools to provide the
OLPC to children on permanent basis, the schools are not comfortable due to high
level of migration. Therefore, it is crucial to sort out this issue for successful
implementation of OLPC project
 There is NO formal training module and the trained teachers are not very clear on
how to integrate these technology devices into teaching learning practices
5.
Major challenges:
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Curriculum: There is NO prescribed curriculum for both pre-service and in service
training of the teachers in the area of “ICT in Education”. Presently, the IT literacy
modules have been used to provide basic IT literacy training. As a continuity of the
effort, the MINEDUC is seriously looking into building the capacity among the
teachers for use of ICT as a tool for teaching and learning. Hence, designing the
Rwanda specific comprehensive curriculum for ICT in Education for both pre-service
and in-service teachers as well as capacity building among teacher trainers are on
top priority.
Teacher trainers: Specific to the RITC team, the Teacher Trainers are not exposed
the academic and pedagogical practices hence the trainers are not able to
contextualize the training for the teachers. If the trainers move to next phase i.e.,
“Use of ICT in Teaching and Learning” the trainers needs to be capacitated
Improper Training: Due to the lack of maintenance / technical support by the
vendors / suppliers, the teachers have been trained on “hardware maintenance”
which has resulted in loss of instructional time for the schools. Even the training
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6.
provided to teachers grossly in-sufficient to carry out trouble shoot when problem
occurs.
Ongoing Pedagogical support: Once teachers trained, there is NO follow up
support to teachers at the cluster / school level. This has resulted in wastage of
trained skills and knowledge in using ICT in schools.
Digital Learning Material: Due to paucity of digital learning material at the
schools, the teachers are not keen to use the computer labs. Unfortunately, the
teachers have not capacitated to develop the teaching Learning material on their
own.
Lack of Maintenance and technical support: The port technical support at the
school also an issue. At any given point of time, 2-3 computers are down with some
problem or other hence teachers are little frustrated with the technical support.
High cost and low availability / reliability of electricity: The availability of
Electricity is an issue. Both quality and quantity of electricity availability is a real
challenge. In addition, high cost of electricity is directly linked with the use of
computer labs for the teaching and learning. Some head teachers are not very
cooperative for optimally using the lab due to recurring cost. Presently, the
computer labs are predominantly used by the classes 10-12 students for their IT
learning
Monitoring and Evaluation: The Monitoring & Evaluation has been very weak in
the MINEDUC system.
The Inspectorate General is keen in collecting the
administrative data. The lack of school based support for the teachers is evident
that the teachers are not able to fully use the deployed ICT infrastructure for
Teaching and Learning
Suggestions / Recommendations:
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Design the scientific tools to collect in depth information on the need, capacity gaps
and areas of intervention to make the TPD more effective in the area of ICT in
Education. If require, Education Specialists may visit Rwanda and carry out the
survey among the National Institutions and Teacher trainers and Teachers to collect
in depth info for further analysis and also to design appropriate intervention
Build a capacity building workshop to sensitize the Teacher training curriculum
developers, teacher trainers (pre/in service). This could include deep reflection on
the design and principles of 21st Century learning environments and also trigger the
thinking process on various possibilities integrating ICT into Teaching and Learning
Directly assist or enable suitable partnership to develop Rwanda specific ICT in
Education teacher training module. Enable TSC, KIE, NUR, NCDC and RITC to work
together in developing the ICT in Education teacher training curriculum
One of the potential partners for MINEDUC is Intel Corporation. Intel is keen to
assist MINEDUC in developing the Rwanda specific teacher training curriculum based
the UNESCO’s ICT in Education Teachers Competency Framework. If require, GeSCI
education specialists can actively participate and provide relevant inputs during the
module development stage. In any case, the final review of this curriculum has to be
reviewed by GeSCI specialists and provide comprehensive input before finalization of
the same
Subsequently, CPF shall assist MINEDUC to develop the budget and training logistics
for the large scale teacher training / capacity development program in the country
Enable ongoing pedagogical support through the Open Distance Learning / school
based / cluster based support. Facilitate the National Level Institutions to start this
initiative