Rwanda has increased the salaries of primary school teachers by 88 percent, while its secondary school teachers receive a payment increase of 40 percent, effective August 2022.
The Rwandan government announced the increment as part of its earlier promised program to increase the quality of life for teachers.
Prime Minister Edouard Ngirente announced the development on Monday, August 1, while addressing both houses of Parliament on the state of the education sector.
Among the revised salaries, Ngirente said elementary school teachers will receive a salary increase of up to 88%, while their high school peers will receive a 40% salary increase.
The change comes at a time when a newly hired A2 certified teacher (mostly in elementary school) will have a starting net salary of 50,849 rwf, which is expected to increase to 95,596 rwf.
While the salary of a teacher hired and paid based on an A1 degree is increased by 40 percent of the starting net salary of 54,916, the salary increases to Rwf76882.
The salary of a teacher hired and paid on the basis of grade A0 with a net starting salary of RWF 70,195 must also increase by 40%, which must increase to RWF 98273.
“We also haven’t forgotten about the salaries of principals, assistant principals and support staff in public and government-subsidized schools, which have also been revised upwards,” Ngirente said.
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Although the government has increased teachers’ salaries by 10% since March 2019, more than 1,000 teachers are leaving the profession every month searching for better welfare, according to the prime minister.
This, he stressed, will cost the government at least 300 million rupees to fill the gap every three months, the equivalent of 1.2 billion rupees a year.
“The damage is serious when you lose more than 12,000 teachers a year, with delays in hiring processes, there will be a gap in getting those classes to students.”
The positive side, Ngirente added, is that the government has already implemented a digital teacher recruitment process to reduce backlogs.
The salary increase is part of a package that will include incentives to improve the well-being of teachers and increase the quality of education in public and state schools for general education and training.
“Rs 5 billion has also been allocated to Umwarimu Sacco to strengthen liquidity conditions and teachers’ access to funding,” he added.
The prime minister also said that he would encourage more people to join the teaching profession to improve the quality of education.
