GITEGA January 31st (ABP) – The communal directorate of education in Gitega commune (center of the country) organized in the afternoon of Friday January 27, 2023, a day for self-assessment and exchange of experiences on strategies to improve pedagogical and administrative practices, for education officials in that commune, a check on the site by ABP has revealed.
The communal director of education, Mr. Népomuscène Ndayavugwa, said that this directorate has the great enthusiasm to have a good success and a good place in the school rankings at the provincial and national level. This is why, according to him, the directorate organized that day to analyze the challenges that haunt this sector and together propose solutions to improve performance for the current school year.
Mr. Ndayavugwa pointed out that for the 2021-2022 school year, various schools of the communal education directorate for which he is responsible have encountered a lot of challenges, namely the lack of school benches, textbooks and teachers. However, he indicated that, currently, those challenges are being eliminated little by little.
He indicated that in connection with the school benches, the government of Burundi, through the minister in charge of education, granted the DCE Gitega 1,640 school benches during the first term. He also indicated that 600 school benches are being manufactured and that the Gitega commune and the NGO Word Vision have also contributed to address that major challenge. He hopes that other partners will continue to contribute in that sector, because, according to him, out of more than 4,500 school benches that were missing, there are almost 2,000 benches left for complete solution.
Regarding textbooks especially for the first three levels, Mr. Ndayavugwa warmly thanked SOS Burundi which contributed a lot by buying some books for the 5th and 6th grades. As for the challenge related to the shortage of teachers, the communal director of education in Gitega commune strongly encouraged the communal administration and the communal council that took the decision to recruit more than 300 volunteer teachers so that there would be no more classes without teachers. Mr. Ndayavugwa said that all those contributions have led them to have a success at the educational level and facilitation with regard to school administration.
For example, he indicated that the Gitega commune had a success rate of 66.8% in the national competition in 2017 while in 2022, it had a success rate of 85.8%.
He also pointed out that to achieve this good success, the communal directorate of education of Gitega commune has established a program of morning studies for revisions and the return in the afternoon for reinforcement.
As part of the exchange of experiences, teachers were called on to avoid delays, to no longer show up in class without preparing the day’s lessons.
It should be noted that the communal directorate of education of Gitega commune has 266 schools, 90,238 students, 4,020 teachers and 302 volunteers. That day was also an opportunity for the DCE to certify schools that have done well compared to others for the 2021-2022 school year.