Teaching in a Rwandan Secondary School

My school is G.S. Notre dame de la Paix, a catholic boarding school( most secondary schools here are boarding schools).

Average age of pupils: 16-25( some even older)

Reasons:Many children don't start primary school until they are 11 or older.

There is often a gap between leaving primary school and starting secondary school (usually financial reasons)

Secondary schooling is not free, parents must pay the equivalent of 30 pounds a year-a massive sum for most Rwandans. Some pupils manage a year of school and then their parents simply can't afford to continue paying.(It's so sad).

Rwanda uses the European system of repeating a year for students who don't obtain high enough marks.

Class sizes: between 50 and 60.

Resources: blackboard, chalk and teacher ingenuity.

No text books, no photocopying facilities, nothing on the walls. Classrooms dark and crumbling, rain hammering down on the tin roof sometimes so you cant hear yourself speak.

Student motivation:

desperate to learn and to do well and make something of themselves. No discipline problems!

The Rwandan govt has now decided that Rwanda should be an anglophone rather than francophone country and fro March pupils in years 1 and 4 have to be taught in all subjects in English, which is tough on the teachers whose English is generally very poor-some have lost their jobs because they simply can't teach in English.

My school is almost self sufficient-school cows, school hens, vegetables,( fertiliser from the school's ecological toilets) which are ENORMOUS( Don't even think about it!)