Rwamagana District is set to complete construction of 911 classrooms in September, in the efforts to solve congestion issues and establish distancing in its classrooms.
This comes as distancing is one of the most important preventive measures in the middle of Covid-19 pandemic, which has forced Rwanda to stop schools’ activities in March this year.
Parents are happy about the plan to improve the learning environment of their children.
“One day when I asked my child what they just learned at school, he said he could not look properly at the blackboard and could not hear well that day, and that is when I learned that congestion in classrooms was real,” declared Etienne Habiyaremye, parent in Muyumbu Sector.
Angelique Muhawenimana, mother of four, hails from Yeruzalemu, Bujyujyu Cell, Muyumbu Sector, and has a 12-year old child who studies at GS Murama.
She said that teachers do their best, but added that the classes must have been too big for the teacher to reach out to every child.
Muhawenimana, 37, said she dropped out of school when she was in P4, but she wishes her offspring had an environment she could never have.
“If I had a chance to study, I would be elsewhere other than here, I would be a more important person,” she reflected.
Laurent Nkerabigwi, Headmaster of GS Murambi, a primary and ordinary level school in Muhazi Sector that has got nine new classrooms, said, “We had congestion in our classrooms, we had 1,294 children in only 16 classrooms, now we are lucky to get nine more rooms.”
In primary classes, a room accommodated as many as 86 pupils, and in secondary classes 66, and new rooms will help the learners study “in a world-standard”, in which a class must not exceed 45 learners.
Rwamagana District vice mayor in charge of social affairs, Jeanne Umutoni, said the classrooms also have other related facilities, namely 1,295 toilets.
“We have done it in two phases, the first phase had 98 classrooms and is 100 percent complete,” she stated.
The second phase completion is at about 60 percent, because some sites are at roofing stage, while others are at lintel level. They hope to finish the works in September.
Considering the speed we are at, we will finish on time, the vice mayor insisted.
In Eastern Province, 5,803 classrooms are being constructed across 708 sites; more than 100 of the sites are new.
