High education standards prompted Rwanda to recruit Zimbabwean teachers

Chinhoyi (New Ziana) -The Rwandan government decided to recruit teachers from Zimbabwe after being impressed by the high standards of the country’s education system, a senior official has said.

Rwanda Ministry of Education permanent secretary Charles Karakye said this when he visited the Chinhoyi University of Technology (CUT) to observe teachers being recruited by his government who were writing online examinations.

Shortlisted candidates will sit for an oral interview next Tuesday.

Karakye told the media that Zimbabwean teachers would add value to the education system in Rwanda.

The Ministry of Education in Rwanda and the Ministry of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare in Zimbabwe signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in December last year to recruit local teachers and in May this year 2022 signed a recruitment manual.

Zimbabwe recommended 469 candidates for the recruitment, of whom 401 were shortlisted for the interviews.

The examinations went on for two days at five chosen institutions around the country, namely Hillside Teachers College in Bulawayo, Harare Institute of Technology, Gweru Polytechnic, Masvingo Polytechnic and CUT.

Karakye said a team of Zimbabweans and Rwandese officials had been deployed in selected centres as invigilators to ensure that examinations were conducted in a fair and transparent manner using the online system which was used in Rwanda to recruit the public servants,” he said.

He said there were no limitations in the recruitment and also on the duration of service, since they were only looking for skills and those who passed the first stage would proceed to the next one.

“We are not looking at age or gender, we are looking for people with skills in the categories we clarified. We will have contracts but they will not state the minimum or maximum number of years,” he explained.

“Those who pass the online exam will proceed to the next phase of oral interviews which are supposed to happen next week 23 August then after that comes the signing of the contracts.

“There are specific areas of interest categorized into three that is teachers in basic education of various subjects, polytechnics and universities. Qualified teachers are expected to be in Rwanda by late September before the school year starts in October,” Charles said.

Speaking at the same occasion, CUT Pro Vice Chancellor Professor Irvin Mpofu said he found the Rwandese to be very friendly and cooperative when during the six years he worked as a lecturer in that country.

He said CUT was excited to be part of the recruitment programme by availing its ICT facilities to conduct the examinations.

New Ziana