RUYIGI September 13th (ABP) – The governor of the province of Ruyigi, Ms. Emerencienne Tabu calls on the people of her province to redouble their efforts in the fight against the phenomenon of school dropout which is tending to become widespread in that province.
Sanctioning administrative authorities and parents who do not regularly and rigorously monitor their children to instill in them a love of school is now among the decisions taken to improve performance for the 2022-2023 school year. Those decisions were taken at a meeting held on Friday, September 9, 2022, regarding preparations for the start of the school year for this upcoming school year.
During this meeting the governor of the province of Ruyigi, let it be known that the problem of school dropout is experiencing a more worrying extent in his province and even at the level of the whole country. She indicated that the province of Ruyigi has experienced a number of 17,200 cases of school dropouts and that it occupies the 1st place in the country during the past school year of 2021-2022.
She deplores that state of affairs and warns that such a pace is hampering her province’s movement towards development.
The provincial director of education in Ruyigi Mr. Onésphore Nsabiyumva confirms that school dropouts are the biggest challenge and that binding measures must be taken and implemented to end that problem.
Among other things, he specified that the school dropout rate in the province of Ruyigi for the past 2021-2022 school year is more than 14% and that this is equivalent to saying that out of 5 children who start the school year at least one of them drop out of school before the end of the year.
Mr. Nsabiyumva said that the consequence of this phenomenon is that in several schools located especially on the border with Tanzania, some schools are closing, no longer having the number of students and students sufficient to operate.
For him, it is high time that teachers, administrators and parents can answer for their failure to supervise children under penalty of fines and penalties so that they wake up and participate actively in the improvement of education and its performance in that province.
Faced with that situation, the governor of Ruyigi, gave advice and invited the people as well as all the natives of the province to contribute so that this phenomenon of school dropout ceases. Those two authorities ask the authorities of the Kibondo region in the United Republic of Tanzania to continue to discourage the movement of children and adolescents who go there to seek employment.