Reaching National Scale in Rwanda: Employment Skills for Every Secondary Student
Initially launched in Rwanda in 2016, Educate!’s approach to co-designing an employment-focused subject in secondary school is going national. Building on a strong policy foundation, our intensive two-year teacher training model is now reaching every secondary school across the country. In close partnership with the government, this approach will deliver education that builds practical skills, reflects the labor market and represents meaningful systems change.
For almost a decade, Educate! has worked alongside the Rwandan government, integrating employment-focused learning into the national education system. This collaboration supports Vision 2050, the country’s framework for growth and development – particularly its emphasis on cultivating a labor force that’s highly skilled and gainfully employed. Today, we’re delighted to announce that our evidence-based teacher training model is at national scale; it’s impacting every secondary school and over 165,000 learners annually.
The journey began when Educate! was invited to serve as a technical advisor to the Rwanda Education Board (REB) on designing a competency-based curriculum. Since then, we’ve assisted in the rollout of the reform, transforming education to prepare young people for dignified livelihoods and employment in collaboration with policymakers, teachers and other partners.
When we began work in Rwanda, we weren’t reinventing the wheel. We adapted a proven approach refined over years in Ugandan secondary schools, where Educate! youth mentors deliver employment-focused learning directly to students. To integrate this into a national education system, we developed a three-stage strategy focused on sustainability and scale – an innovation in systems change. This approach intended to demonstrate that an effective single-subject reform can deliver meaningful impacts at a faster rate and lower cost than a comprehensive reform.
Stage one: Reforming policies
Initially, in close collaboration with the Education Development Center (EDC) and Akazi Kanoze Access, we co-designed meaningful improvements to Rwanda’s national Entrepreneurship subject, compulsory in the last three years of secondary education.
The goal was to develop an engaging, student-centered subject that prepares young people with the flexible skill set required for employment or entrepreneurship using an experiential teaching method known as Skills Lab. Beyond that, we wanted to provide students with hands-on experience running an enterprise through business clubs. For example, rather than just learning the theory of market research, youth applied this skill in their communities and developed a product in response.
Preparing Africa’s growing population — who will make up one-third of the global youth labor force by 2030 — to build dignified livelihoods has never been more critical. Every year, 10-12 million new African job seekers enter the employment market, yet only three million formal jobs are available.
Rwanda has over three million students, and in the next 10 years, the number of youth in upper secondary is expected to double. These school graduates will face the same challenge as young people in the rest of Africa, where around 90% of youth work in the informal economy. Rwanda’s curriculum reform was designed to reflect this reality and prepare students with the practical skills to navigate today’s economic landscape.
“In our student business, we make soap and sell it to the teachers and parents. Last year, we shared the profits. In the future, I want to be a successful entrepreneur who runs my own hair salon.”
According to Minister of Education Gaspard Twagirayezu, the impact of the reformed Entrepreneurship subject is evident: “Working with Educate! has been significant because students have developed an entrepreneurial mindset. Students can now think beyond their notebooks, which is a win for the education system.”
Stage two: Empowering teachers
To empower educators to teach in this experiential way, we followed the reform with a two-year teacher training model, the Educate! Exchange. In 2016, Educate! helped train 104 Entrepreneurship teachers. Now, our peer coaching model is reaching thousands, with Master Trainers training fellow teachers at the district and school level. Educators also receive ongoing support from Educate! trainers and visit other schools to observe best practices. A robust peer support model is a cost-effective way to reach teachers and a useful tool for building communities of practice that sustain professional development.
The peer coaching training model is a cost-effective, scalable approach that has the advantage of building communities of practice that collaborate and learn from each other.
“Together, teachers have a chance to synergize and collaborate through small communities and units for effective implementation of skills-based learning,” says Educate!’s Principal Product Strategist Rogers Patrick Kamugisha.
As a former educator himself, he notes: “One of the challenges of education reform is related to capacity building. It's important to take into consideration existing government structures when training teachers because sustainability depends on those structures and how teachers can leverage them to solve pedagogical challenges.”
Another Master Trainer Didace Toyishime emphasizes that, “teachers are no longer content distributors. Instead, they help learners gain business and leadership skills. Teachers can now foster real entrepreneurs — not only students with good marks, but also students who can launch businesses and projects. That's what we call a victory for the teacher.”
In addition to the positive reception from teachers, the Educate! Exchange has proven impact. A Randomized Controlled Trial found that teachers who participated in the two-year training were 19% more likely to deliver student-centered learning. Meanwhile, six months after secondary completion, university enrollment doubled across all students and increased 167% among young women. Young women were 16% more likely to also have a business and saw a 12% reduction in those not in education, employment, or training (NEET).
Stage three: The challenge of sustainability
In Rwanda, we’re also currently focused on delivering the third phase of our systems-change approach. To sustain impact, we’ve supported the government in introducing measures that encourage long-term shifts in pedagogy. One such strategy is assessment reform, specifically continuous assessment.
Toward this aim, Educate! and partners built the Comprehensive Assessment Management Information System (CAMIS). Supported by a $1.5 million investment from the World Bank, this national assessment data system facilitates a shift away from focusing solely on exams toward project work that evaluates students’ skills development.
Now a mandatory platform, CAMIS has been rolled out across all education levels and subjects. The project was the result of a collaborative effort by the Ministry of Education, Rwanda’s National Examination and School Inspection Authority (NESA), and REB alongside Educate!, Building Learning Foundations (BLF), Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), the World Bank, and Tunoze Gusoma-USAID.
CAMIS allows teachers to input student data to a national database through an online portal or offline via USSD, a no-cost communication protocol similar to SMS/text. The system enables educators to monitor students’ progress over time. It also incentivizes student-centered teaching methods: in the near future, continuous assessment data from CAMIS, such as project work, is expected to contribute to a percentage of learners’ national exam score. CAMIS also gives education officials increased insight into educational trends across the country. This data can then be used for policymaking.
In addition to supporting continuous assessment, the platform has played a vital role in standard exam administration. Following a request from NESA, in 2023 Educate! created a new feature in CAMIS to distribute exams. This development was not only cost-effective but also significantly enhanced the security of the examination process.
These important strides, which are changing education for generations of students, are only possible through the continued collaboration between our partners and team – as well as Rwanda's steadfast commitment to employment-focused education.
In line with the economic agenda set out in Vision 2050, transforming teaching on a national scale sets a precedent for the entire region. It symbolizes the potential for a brighter future where youth in Africa drive job creation and growth not only on the continent but also on a global scale.
