CANKUZO August 30th (ABP) – The school province of Cankuzo recorded more than 9,000 cases of dropouts during the 2022/2023 school year. This was revealed by the Provincial Director of Education, Mrs. Jeanne Hakizimana, during a meeting to prepare for the 2023-2024 school year, a check on the site by ABP has revealed.
Despite the efforts made by the administration in collaboration with the provincial directorate of education in raising awareness aimed at making people love school, there has been an increase in cases of school dropouts over the years, she deplored.
Thus, Mrs. Hakizimana said that for the 2020-2021 school year, there were more than 6,000 cases of dropouts, more than 8,000 cases during the 2021-2022 school year and more than 9,000 cases of dropouts for the past school year, i.e., a rate of 10% of the total number of pupils counted for the latter. The majority of these dropouts are recorded in basic schools, especially in the peripheral villages of this province, she added.
Among the motives for those school dropouts, Mrs. Hakizimana cited in particular poverty in the families, the departure of children for Tanzania in search for money, the indigenous peoples having not yet understood the importance of school as well as the back and forth movements of certain families. She also pointed out the irregular follow-up of pupils by the heads of certain schools, hence the delay in reporting absence or school dropouts.
The governor of Cankuzo province, Mr. Boniface Banyiyezako also supported the provincial directorate of education by calling on those responsible for the education sector, whatever the level, to pull themselves together to ensure regular monitoring of their pupils.
As for the administrators, he recommended that they set up village committees to monitor children so that they will be informed daily of any absence from school. Regarding the lack of school benches, Mr. Banyiyezako called on them to collaborate with the PRODECI-Turikumwe program so that those benches can be made.
It is worthy to note that the Mishiha and Gisagara are respectively the first communes where there are a high number of cases of school dropouts.