Why EA schools need co-curricular activities

It is common consensus amongst developmental psychologists and education experts that school life should be stimulating and interesting.

Interesting because learners should actively participate in art, sports, music and drama, among others, during break time and after class. But this is not always the case.

In fact, such activities are on the decline as schools focus on academics. As a result, schools have not given co-curricular activities enough attention. But what could be going wrong and what is the way forward?

Teacher Patrice Sugira, acknowledges the changing trend in schools and attributes it to limited time.

“There are many subjects on the timetable which makes it hard to include other activities like sports and drama,” he says. “However, we normally allow the students to engage in co-curricular activities during the weekends when there’s less class work.”

Sugira, who acknowledges the importance of co-curricular, also attributes the decline to lack of motivation of teachers by the school authorities.

“Most times teachers who train students to sing, dance, and act or play sport in most cases just volunteer yet it requires a lot of commitment and dedication,” Sugira adds.

But Albert Ngabonziza, a Biology teacher puts the blame on teacher training institutions which concentrate more on other fields of academics while giving arts and physical education a blind eye.

“I once visited a drama class at Kigali Institute of Education and there were about 15 teacher trainees yet the other classes had over 120 students,” Ngabonziza says, stressing that that number is so small compared to the number of learners and schools in the world.

“Only if training institutions deliberately train more teachers in co-curricular activities will the shortage of personnel in that area reduce,” Ngabonziza adds.

But Rahma Umuhoza, a debate trainer, puts the blame on school leaders who continue to think that co-curricular activities are second to academics and therefore don’t need much attention. That is why, Umuhoza continues, school administrators always invest in equipment for laboratories and classrooms but not sports or drama.

“If students are to engage in music, they need instruments such as guitars, piano and drums which most schools cannot afford,” Umuhoza says.