Rwandan Govt. Encourages Digitization in Schools

The Rwandan government, through Rwanda Basic Education Board (REB) has announced plans to reinforce the exercise of distributing laptops to teachers with officials saying that the target is to have all teachers in the country equipped with laptops by the year 2025.

It says this is an important pronouncement especially coming at a time the education sector is undergoing a series of reforms with a view to put the student at the center of the learning process through the Competence Based Curriculum that was launched about seven years ago.

With the new curriculum, there is need for constant research by the educators to ensure they are abreast of what is happening elsewhere, a departure from the past where they relied on decades-old textbooks that ended up missing context or overtaken by events.

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The distribution of laptops to teachers, which has been ongoing for some time now, will also greatly complement the Smart Classroom initiative which is geared towards churning out a critical mass of innovators because a smart mindset starts with a teacher.

It also complements other incentives that have been put in place to ensure schools retain the best quality of teachers because it creates a better work environment for teachers, some of whom were shunning the trade due lack of information.

However, the distribution of laptops should go hand in hand with efforts to train the teachers on how best to make the most of them to produce maximum results.

The agency said the initiative makes an urgent case for speeding up the process to connect all schools to the internet because a laptop without internet will be as good as nothing both for the teachers and their learners.