The ministry of education has initiated a plan geared towards fostering and empowering the girl-child in education that are perceived to have been left behind because of historical imbalances that our various patriarchal cultures imposed on the fair sex. According to policy makers in the ministry, the plan will be implemented through annual competitions where girls who excel academically will be rewarded. Recently efforts to reward the best girl performers took place in Musanze District under the auspices of the First Lady, Jeannette Kagame who awarded various girls for having excelled in PLE and Senior three national examinations in the Northern Province. It was a third ceremony of its kind in the country.
The Forum for African Women Educationists (Fawe) Rwanda chapter has carried out sensitisation in schools to make girls develop confidence and encourage girls take up science subjects formerly perceived to be for boys. For anyone who is upfront with current affairs will know that the country is doing well in respect of women's participation in politics or government. Rwanda has the highest number of women Members of parliament world wide. It is thus hopeful that the progressive policy of empowering girls in education would break the record in women's education as the case is in politics.
In fact, in primary leaving examinations of 2006 and the recently released senior six examinations girls have returned better results than boys in the national examinations. Minister of Education Jean Arc Mujawamariya, on the occasion of awarding prizes to best performers in Musanze commended the trend and noted that girls can as well perform if given equal opportunities. The first 5 pupils in PLE were girls. But in order to have a significant improvement on life for the less advantaged girls who are born in the rural countryside, where the majority of our people live, then it is apparent that the benefits from these good policies have to penetrate down to the people where they must be felt.
This calls for sensitisation of local leaders, right at the village (Umudugudu) level to own the programme of girl-child empowerment. The responsible officials should devise means and ways that would make it difficult for the girl-child to drop out of school prematurely and get married off at a tender age. Probably the introduction of incentives to girls like free "o" level education will help increase girl's chances of reaching higher education. Once we get implementation of the basics right, it is difficult to see how Rwanda would not, for instance, make it much easier for women to compete favourably in the formal employment sector, and thus earn equitable incomes.
The First Lady Jeannette Kagame while awarding the girls underscored the need for the girls to compete favourably with their boy counterparts noting that they [girls] are evaluated on the same bench marks in the labour market. While addressing the Rwanda association of university women at the group's first public lecture in September 2006 on "female access to and participation in higher education, interventions and challenges at KIST, professor V G Masanja, then a lecturer of mathematics at the university noted that boys are systematically favoured and girls discriminated by the education system in the country.
Masanja, quoting national examination statistics released by the education ministry of 2003/4 pointed out that almost equal numbers of boys and girls who sat for PLE, only 28 out of 100 students attained the pass mark. Of every 100 passing students, 39 were girls while 61 were boys. 35.84 per cent of those who attained the pass mark were admitted into government secondary schools; however, for every 100 students admitted, only 33 were girls while 67 were boys. It is in that regard that one would note with concern that such male preferential treatment and female discrimination need to be addressed.
