5.3. Conclusion
On the basis of the discussion of the findings on each of the
objectives the following conclusions were made.
The pupils of private primary schools of Gasabo perform better
than their counterparts of public primary schools in PLE. This doesn't come
randomly, as they are well prepared from the early first classes. Though having
the teachers of almost the same qualification, and pupils of almost the same
background, private primary schools motivate more their teachers and their
pupils than public primary schools do through various ways: good pay to
teachers, small classes, good working environment, conducive environment for
learning (availability and adequacy of school resources), regular evaluations,
good collaboration between school and parents/guardians, guidance and
counseling services made operational, excursions etc.
Educational resources (human, physical, material, and
financial) are more available and adequate in private primary schools than in
public ones; while these resources should be made available to the school to
create conducive climate to produce desirable outcomes. (Heneveld 1994;
Heneveld & Craig 1995). The lack of some necessary facilities in public
primary schools is justified by the financial resources which are very few due
to the lack of variety of funding sources. These schools are only funded by the
government through the annual budget (but for the case of private subsidized
schools, there may be another funding source, though irregular that is the
founder of the school e.g. a church) while private primary schools have
alternative sources of funding. They can raise tuition, and they also can raise
significant amounts of money from a variety of development activities,
including annual appeals, cultivation of alumni and alumnae, and solicitation
of grants from foundations and corporations. The strong allegiance to private
schools by their alumni makes the chances of fund-raising success a real
possibility in most cases. And this allows them to supply themselves with
required facilities at any cost.
There is good collaboration between private primary schools
and parents/guardians of pupils for their best education while in public
primary schools such collaboration is too little.
In Rwanda, children of high ranked politicians and other
officials are more enrolled in private primary schools than in public primary
schools. This gives a view that even politicians and these other officials
recognize the low quality of public primary schools in comparison to private
ones.
On the third objective, the study concluded that teacher
quality has a bearing on pupils' academic performance and that pupils studying
in private schools where teachers have quality exhibited in terms of their
academic proficiency and experience tend to perform better than pupils in
public schools where teachers are mainly A' level certificate holders,
5.3. Recommendations
On the basis of the above findings and conclusions, the
following recommendations were made
The government of Rwanda should do its best to provide public
and private subsidized primary schools with required facilities so as to create
in them a welcoming environment for teaching/learning process by treating
teachers humanly (giving them reasonable salaries, treating them as other civil
servants so that they cease to take the teaching career as a transition while
they are searching good jobs),
The Ministry of education should reduce the bureaucracy in the
school administration, allowing public schools to diversify their sources of
funding, providing public primary schools with staff in charge of guidance and
counseling and increasing the number of teachers and classrooms to reduce the
pupils-teacher ratio, as this would also contribute to close the segregation in
education based on the choice of quality school where to enroll one's child
(poor parents/guardians are forced to enroll their children in public schools
because private schools are expensive).
Politicians and other officials of Rwanda should also keep
monitoring and evaluating the quality of public education in primary schools
and take general decision in favor of all citizens of Rwanda instead of taking
individual decisions of enrolling their own children into private primary
schools (as they have financial means) because they realize the low quality of
public primary schools.
The RNEC should conduct a study on the factors of performance
in PLE and use its results to advise the government and to revise the way PLE
are prepared and administered if not, it will keep saying that it combats
segregation in education at all cost while it contributes to increase it by
giving the same test to pupils while their studying conditions have not been
the same.
Teachers and head teachers of public primary schools should
use the resources available in their respective schools efficiently to increase
the performance of their pupils in general and in PLE in particular.
Parents and guardians should collaborate regularly with the
public primary schools for better education of their children by helping
children correct their home works, giving them enough time at home to revise
their notes, hiring private monitors for them where it is possible, visiting
them regularly at school to know how they progress in learning and their
discipline at school.
The value of a teacher's quality in terms of experience,
qualification, ability to prepare for lessons should be honored and compensated
in order to give teachers the motivation to adequately do their jobs and
support pupils learning to improve on their performance.
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