When education in emergencies fails: learners’ motivations for a second chance education in post-conflict Rwanda

ABSTRACT

There has been an increasing effort to deliver Education in Emergencies (EiE) from the international community since the 1990s because of protracted humanitarian situations. Despite the growing attention to EiE, many children in conflict-affected situations miss schooling without having the opportunity to receive a second chance education (SCE), or voice their perspectives on this situation. Given the gaps within EiE, this paper focuses on the largely overlooked issue of out-of-school children and young people resulting from conflict, and potential for an SCE. Based on 23 life story interviews conducted in Rwanda, it examines how learners in post-genocide Rwanda made sense of the complex education journey that they undertook and their motivations for an SCE. The research demonstrates various motivations, including both intrinsic and extrinsic, using self-determination theory. It provides learners’ perspectives on education that are currently missing in the EiE field.

KEYWORDS:

• Conflict
• education in emergencies
• second chance education
• learner motivations
• Rwanda

Introduction

Since the 1990s, the challenge of providing education during emergencies has been increasingly discussed because of the existence of protracted humanitarian situations. Various actors have accelerated efforts to deliver Education in Emergencies (EiE) as a basic human right, which is enshrined in international laws. However, despite the increasing awareness and effort, less than 3% of global humanitarian funding is allocated to education (EU 2017). The impact of the humanitarian crisis on education is conspicuous as more than half of refugees between five and 17 years old missed schooling in 2016 (UNHCR 2017). It is amplified secondary education and above, often due to the donor focus on primary education (Khawaja, Martinez, and Bill 2016, 51–59). The above underscores an overlooked issue of children and young people who missed their educational opportunities during emergencies.

Given the limited attention to out-of-school children and young people, this research focuses on their circumstances around education. It aims to examine how and why those who became out-of-school achieved a second chance education (SCE) as an adult, at least up to the lower secondary level, in post-genocide Rwanda. By doing so, it seeks to contribute to the growing study of EiE by adding to the evidence base on the complex educational paths and motivations of those whose education was affected by conflict and subsequent post-conflict reconstruction. The research is qualitative and interpretive in its design and gathers data mainly through life story interviews to uncover the context around the achievement of an SCE, as experienced and understood by the learners.

The research findings on Rwanda reveal how education contributed to dividing their society throughout the political contest and illustrate the various barriers that existed to exclude individuals from schooling before, during and after the genocide. By focusing on the learners who managed to obtain an SCE, the findings highlight their understanding of the educational journey that they undertook and their motivations for it. The research makes contributions to the field of scholarship in EiE by illuminating learners’ perspectives of education, which are largely missing in the current EiE field. It also indicates the need to broaden the EiE field to include an SCE and learners’ motivations, given the challenges to provide education during emergencies.

This paper is structured as follows. After this introduction, the second section provides a brief review of the EiE field. The third section explains the context and relevance of the Rwanda case in studying education during and after the conflict. The fourth explains the methodology used in this research. The fifth presents and discusses the findings on how individuals had missed out on education and achieved their SCE. Then, the sixth discusses these learners’ motivations for education using self-determination theory (SDT). The last section concludes the paper by highlighting the key observations and findings from the subjective reality of learners in post-genocide Rwanda.

Emerging discourses on education in emergencies

Education in Emergencies (EiE) refers to ‘education for populations affected by unforeseen situations such as armed conflict or natural disasters’ (Sinclair 2007, 52). The field of EiE was initiated by aid practitioners faced with the increasingly protracted and complex nature of conflict and resulting long-term displacement since the 1990s. The recognition of emergency situations as a major barrier to accessing education was crucial and has resulted in various frameworks. During the Dakar World Education Forum in 2000, Education for All (EFA) was made a global commitment to ensure ‘all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances, and those belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to and complete, free and compulsory primary education of good quality’ by 2015 (UNESCO 2000, 8). Subsequently, the Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE), an open global network, was formed in 2000 ‘to ensure the right to education in emergencies and post-crisis reconstruction’ (INEE 2004, 6).

Subsequently, EiE has entered the academic field of comparative and international education and added humanitarian notions to the conceptual understanding of education as a fundamental human right and an essential for development. The humanitarian element indicates the role of education in protection (Sommers 2009): to provide a safe space for children, physical protection (INEE 2004) and a sense of normality during emergencies, or ‘physical, psychosocial and cognitive protection’ (UN 2009, 1). Furthermore, the EiE field examines the intricate relationships between education and conflict: how education is influenced and shaped by the nature of conflict (Bengtsson and Dryden-Peterson 2016) and how education may negatively affect conflict (Bush and Saltarelli 2000). It looks at changes in systemic dimensions, including curriculum, language, the perceptions of families and aid structures. More importantly, the EiE field sheds light on education development as an essential for post-conflict recovery to ‘disrupt previous systems of inequality, injustice and the potential for cyclical conflict’ rather than simply restoring service delivery (Bengtsson and Dryden-Peterson 2016, 328). Therefore, it tends to focus on factors that affect quality and equity, such as education policy and the role and characteristics of teachers, often through the lenses of inclusion and exclusion.

Despite the increasing attention and efforts to provide EiE, ‘most war-affected youth are not in school and have little reasonable chance of ever gaining access to education of any sort’ (Sommers 2009, 30–31) partly due to the focus on formal education at the primary level. The impact of exclusion on war-affected young people’s lives is detrimental. Therefore, the attention to out-of-school young people, who are often alienated and have diverse needs, and their voices must be increased (Sommers 2009, 36) within the EiE field. Thus, this paper looks at second chance education (SCE) as an alternative educational provision in emergency and post-conflict situations which is scarcely studied (Baxter and Bethke 2009, 26). A ‘second chance’ education is needed when ‘the first attempt’ failed for various reasons and in different circumstances. The need for an SCE is intense in conflict-affected situations since many children and young people end up missing ‘the first attempt’ at a large scale. The SCE can take various forms and lacks a precise definition (Nordlund, Stehlik, and Strandh 2013). In general circumstances, it plays an essential role in providing lifelong learning opportunities to improve the employability of adults and increase human capital although its contributions are often neglected and undervalued. While individuals are frequently blamed for their educational failures, they are often excluded or alienated and are forced to seek a ‘second chance’ (McGregor et al. 2015, 611). The various forms of the existing SCE are usually underpinned by particular philosophies, such as ‘lifelong education’ to fulfil an ‘essential humanistic concern’ through widening access to education (Field 2001, 6). Unlike the SCE in non-emergency situations, the SCE in EiE addresses a large scale ‘backlog’ of education generated in conflict-affected situations. Hence, in this paper, SCE points to education for individuals, who could not complete their first attempt education due to conflict, to achieve education during post-conflict recovery.

To consider motivations of learners, this paper depends on self-determination theory (SDT) in the absence of motivation theory specifically developed for education in conflict-affected situations. SDT explains different types of motivation, ranging between ‘amotivation’ and ‘intrinsic motivation,’ depending on ‘the degree to which the motivations emanate from the self’ or are self-determined (Ryan and Deci 2000b, 72). It further explains different forms of motivation and the contextual factors, which influence the ‘internalization and integration of the regulation for these behaviours.’ Intrinsic motivation is about doing something because it is ‘inherently interesting or enjoyable’ and is thus to be distinguished from extrinsic motivations for doing an activity for some other separate outcome (Ryan and Deci 2000a, 55). Extrinsic motivation is categorised by four regulations: the least autonomous, ‘externally regulated’ motivation ‘to satisfy an external demand or reward’; an ‘introjected regulation’ that takes in a regulation without fully accepting the regulation as one’s own, a way ‘to demonstrate ability (or avoid failure) in order to maintain feelings of worth’; a more autonomous ‘regulation through identification’ that accepts one’s actions as personally important through ‘a conscious valuing of a behavioural goals or regulations’ and the most autonomous ‘integrated regulation’ that integrates regulations with one’s other values and needs (Ryan and Deci 2000b, 72–73).

Given the existing research gaps within the EiE, this research seeks to make contributions by exploring the complex learning paths and motivations of learners who missed their first attempt education due to the conflicts in Rwanda.

Education and conflict in Rwanda

In Rwanda, numerous barriers to accessing and making progress in education affected the population before and after the 1994 genocide, making the Rwandan case relevant to this research. This section provides a useful background to understand and corroborate the findings from this research in the subsequent sections. Prior to independence from Belgium in 1962, the population in Rwanda was categorised in three ethnic groups: Hutus (approximately 85%), Tutsis (14%) and Twas (1%) (UN n.d.). During the decolonisation process in the late 1950s, the democratisation movement was accompanied with a Hutu uprising against the historical domination by Tutsis, who were privileged by the Belgian administration. This struggle culminated in the ‘social revolution’ between 1959 and 1961 to remove Tutsis from power, pushing them into exile in neighbouring countries like Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC, then Zaire). Following independence, there was institutionalised discrimination against Tutsis. There was also a regional power struggle amongst Hutu politicians as the first President from the south of the country was ousted in a coup in 1973 by a military leader from the north, who became the second President. A civil war broke out in 1990 when the Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA), formed mainly by Tutsis in exile in Uganda, started attacking the country, and this was followed by the genocide in 1994.

The following three main points are essential in understanding the findings from this research. First, education was used systematically to privilege particular groups of people and exclude others throughout Rwandan history (King, Elisabeth 2014). Schools were introduced and managed by missionaries for the colonial administration and favoured Tutsis. The colonialists consolidated the political constructs of ethnic identity through the divisive education system to divide and rule: Hutus were only able to receive limited education to do unskilled jobs while Tutsis were encouraged to study further and occupy important political positions. However, the discrimination within the education system was reversed after independence. The new government, led by President Kayibanda, visibly tried to unseat Tutsis from power and influence by introducing ethnic quotas in schools and employment. Moreover, Tutsis were purged from universities and other public positions in 1973 as political scapegoats when there was a growing political pressure against Kayibanda’s government, leading to a coup (Hilker 2010). Habyarimana, the second President, codified the ‘policy of quota’ to control the progression from primary to secondary education on the basis of examination results, region of origin, ethnicity and gender, amongst others (King, Elisabeth 2014). However, the system was used rather arbitrarily to exclude Tutsis by withholding the examination results, while discrimination based on region was also becoming apparent. Moreover, school curricula and practice, including the history curriculum, are considered to have promoted ethnic divisions and fed social tensions. Thus, education was an essential ingredient for structural violence to inculcate extreme inequality, division and animosity in Rwanda, although not the sole causation for the genocide.

Secondly, Rwanda underwent an unprecedented level of population displacement and movement, making the provision of humanitarian and other assistance enormously challenging. The above ‘social revolution’ forced mostly the Tutsi population of around 120,000 into exile in neighbouring countries by 1962 (UN n.d.). It was followed by recurring attacks against Tutsis to force waves of refugees into mainly Burundi, Uganda, the DRC and Tanzania, amounting to some 480,000 Rwandan refugees by the end of the 1980s. Even worse, the genocide in 1994 led to an unparalleled level of destruction of life and infrastructure: an estimated 800,000 people died, approximately 1.5 million people were internally displaced and an estimated 2.1 million Rwandans fled from the advancing RPA to neighbouring countries, mainly the DRC (UNHCR 2000). This situation was described as ‘the fastest and largest exodus of refugees in modern times’ (Wilkinson 1997, para 4). While the repatriation of more than 200,000 refugees from the DRC started immediately after the genocide (UNHCR 2000), over 700,000 Tutsis were also about to return from exile, mainly from Uganda (Prunier 2009). In this devastation and chaos, about 38% of children aged between seven and 12 lost at least one parent in 2000 (World Bank 2005). The refugee crisis overwhelmed aid assistance, especially in education.

Thirdly, despite the magnitude of destruction, Rwanda achieved a rapid and impressive reconstruction of the education sector after 1994. Schooling in Rwanda was halted in 1990 due to the civil war which preceded the genocide (King, Elisabeth 2014, 111). In the period immediately after the genocide, about 75% of the teachers in primary and secondary schools had been killed, fled or were in prison (Freedman et al. 2008, 250), 70% of children had witnessed violent injury or death and half of the school-aged children were not at school (Obura 2003). Following this severe destruction, schools were reopened as early as September 1994, soon after the RPA took control of the country. Then, Rwanda showed impressive recovery and managed to get back to pre-genocide levels of enrolment within three years, by introducing flexibility in the admission age and timetable (World Bank 2005) and implementing a school rehabilitation programme and a re-enrolment campaign (Obura and Bird 2009).

Furthermore, the post-genocide government has committed to reform the education sector to promote peace, unity and reconciliation in Rwanda (MINEDUC 2010: 1). They have banned any form of discrimination based on ethnic or regional identity, prohibited ethnic categorisation and eliminated the ‘policy of quota’ (King, Elisabeth 2014). The new Education Sector Policy in 2003 was in line with the EFA and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to achieve universal primary education by 2015 and aimed at creating a knowledge-based society and providing quality basic education for all children by 2015. To reach this goal, the government introduced several initiatives to improve access to education especially for orphans, vulnerable children and adolescents, girls, and children with disabilities. Amongst them, Capitation Grants (2003) to replace and abolish primary school fee was notable in helping to achieve almost universal enrolment in primary education (Rubagiza, Umutoni, and Kaleeba 2016), making Rwanda one of the top-performing countries in education in sub-Saharan Africa (UNICEF 2015). The Nine Year Basic Education (9YBE, 2009) was introduced to ensure free access to six years of primary and three years of lower secondary education and has been extended to the 12 Year Basic Education (12YBE, 2012) to include three years of upper secondary education. However, there seems to be a delicate tension in education reforms between donors’ technocratic approach to the EFA as an investment in post-conflict countries (Hilker 2010) and the overlooked complex social realities of Rwanda (Ron-Balsera 2011). To see education as an investment may neglect the ‘importance of inclusiveness and cooperation […] emotional and cognitive rewards of community service […] despite the fact that they may never be used to create exchange value in the labor market’ (Strober 2003, 144 cited in Ron-Balsera 2011, 276).

In relation to SCE, the focus of this paper, the government also took several steps to help children and young people who had missed their educational opportunities. The abovementioned relaxation of the school admission age and timetable when reopening schools (World Bank 2005) was a starting point. In 2002, the Ministry of Education in collaboration with UNICEF Rwanda implemented the ‘catch-up’ programme to provide accelerated primary education (combining two study years in one year) for the large number of orphans and other vulnerable children and adolescents who missed some of their primary education in the 1990s (MINEDUC 2016). The programme aimed to bring over 80% of out-of-school children back to primary education and targeted the age group between nine and 16 but accepted older learners because of the unexpected demand (Kanamugire and Rutakamize 2008).

Following a successful pilot implementation in three locations, the catch-up programme was scaled up to the whole country and scaled down gradually after 2010 until its closure in 2015 (MINEDUC 2016). While there is no comprehensive data available on the entire programme, 52 schools were providing the catch-up programme in 2012 (MINEDUC 2012), including 22 local primary schools delivering a programme of five hours a day by specially trained teachers. Other schools and centres were run by various organisations, such as 25 schools by Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) Rwanda. The Ministry of Education considered the performance of the catch-up students satisfactory based on the end of primary education national examinations in 2013 and 2014 (MINEDUC 2016). As for the leavers’ destinations, such data had not been collected according to a local government official. The Ministry concluded that the catch-up programme had served its time-bound objective and would no longer be needed with the introduction of free compulsory basic education (MINEDUC 2015). However, some stakeholders and life story interviewees support the continuation of the catch-up programme for people who missed the programme.

Another step to an SCE was the private candidate (candidat libre) facility, which allows individuals, who are not enrolled as a student in secondary school but meet the specified criteria set by the Rwanda Education Board (REB), to take the advanced level (A-level) national examination. The facility was initiated in 1999 (The New Times 2008) for individuals, who had missed out secondary education due to joining the army, discrimination through the ‘policy of quota’ or being in exile during the previous government. There was a surge of private candidate preparation centres in the post-genocide period although there is no comprehensive data on individuals who took the private candidate examinations. Until the regulation change in 2013, these centres accepted candidates without Ordinary level (O-level) and taught both lower and upper secondary education levels. The private candidate facility is still available according to the government portal (irembo.gov.rw). Therefore, there is no single approach to formulate an SCE nor evidence to understand the impact of an SCE, the focus of this paper.

In sum, the post-genocide government demonstrated their commitment to ‘leave no one behind,’ in contrast to the previous government, and have made an impressive achievement in enhancing access to education. The three points above make the Rwanda case study crucial in understanding the often untold circumstances around education in emergencies and the subsequent SCE.

Methodology

This research is qualitative and interpretive in its design to understand how learners in post-genocide Rwanda make sense of their surroundings. The interpretive research is contextual and ‘seeks to explain events in terms of actors’ understandings of their own contexts, rather than in terms of a more mechanistic causality’ (Schwartz-Shea and Yanow 2011, 52). This research draws the main primary data from life story interviews with learners who managed to obtain the SCE in post-genocide Rwanda. Life story interviews are ‘a highly contextualized, highly personalized approach to the gathering of qualitative information about the human experience’ (Atkinson 2002, 132). It tells us how the interviewees made sense of their complex learning paths in the Rwandan society and their decisions to pursue an SCE, in other words, their ‘subjective reality.’ Therefore, life stories can illuminate learners’ agency in reclaiming lost educational opportunities and their perceived needs and motivations for formal basic education which might differ from how donors, practitioners and academicians view education. The life stories have the power to render these learners’ voices heard and acknowledged (Atkinson 2002, 134).

The sampling criteria were set as individuals who had passed school age (16 years old with the 9YBE) without completing lower secondary education (S3 or O-level) from any reasons related to conflict, including poverty resulting from socio-economic marginalisation, and completed at least S3 level through an SCE. The research collected the primary data in 2016 from 23 life story interviews and 26 face-to-face semi-structured interviews with stakeholders concerned with the provision of education in Rwanda, including government officials, implementation partners, school representatives and teachers as well as private education providers. It aimed to include a variety of life stories regarding gender, religions, generations, geographical locations and personal circumstances, such as genocide survivors, prisoner’s families, orphans, refugees and returnees, although former child soldiers and disabled people were not identified. Secondary data, including relevant research papers, policy documents, organisational reports and newspaper archives, were also consulted.

The catch-up programme for accelerated learning and the private candidate formed the main source of life story interviews while the personal contacts of the researchers and newspaper archives were also explored. For the catch-up programme, the research sought to have a regional variety and selected two state schools each in Kigali and Southern Province as well as one ADRA school in Western Province where ADRA provided the programme mostly. As for the private candidate, the research identified only two existing private candidate preparation centres in Kigali and contacted their graduates. In total, seven catch-up programme graduates, 13 private candidate graduates and three from individual school attendance were interviewed (Table 1). Given difficulties to identify catch-up graduates, a higher number of private candidate graduates was interviewed. This implies a bias towards urban residents, particular generation and ethnicity. The interviewees included eight women and 15 men, between 25 and 61 years old at the time of the interview.

Table 1. Life story interviews.

		Motivations for SCE
Path to SCE & Interviewee No.	Barrier for education	Cognitive	Skills	Value	Restoration	Gender	Age	Location
PC1	Discrimination		X	X	X	F	51	Kigali
PC2	Discrimination				X	M	42	Kigali
PC3	Discrimination	X			X	F	51	Kigali
PC4	Discrimination			X	X	M	47	Kigali
PC5	Discrimination		X	X		M	61	Kigali
PC12	Discrimination (Muslim)		X			F	59	Kigali
PC6	Refugeehood (orphaned in exile)	X	X	X		M	36	Kigali
PC7	Refugeehood (exile)	X	X	X	X	M	37	Kigali
PC8	Refugeehood (exile)				X	F	44	Kigali
PC10	Refugeehood (exile)		X			M	37	Kigali
PC13	Refugeehood (exile)		X	X	X	F	40	Kigali
PC9	Poverty		X	X		M	53	Kigali
PC11	Genocide and violence				X	F	35	Kigali
CU3	Poverty (street child)			X		M	26	Kigali
CU1	Poverty (father’s death)			X		M	25	Kamonyi (Southern)
CU2	Poverty (father killed in the genocide)			X		F	25	Kamonyi (Southern)
CU4	Poverty (orphan)		X	X		M	26	Kamonyi (Southern)
CU5	Poverty (father’s death in prison)		X			M	33	Kamonyi (Southern)
CU6	Family (remarriage after divorce)			X		M	27	Nyanza (Southern)
CU7	Discrimination		X			M	41	Karongi (Western)
IN1	Refugeehood (after 1994)	X		X		M	38	Huye (Southern)
IN2	Discrimination		X	X	X	F	44	Huye (Southern)
IN3	Family (unwilling)		X	X	X	M	32	Huye (Southern)

The life story interviews were conducted mainly by the lead researcher, after sharing with two national research assistants the interview guide and timeline to ensure consistency and efficiency of the interviews. The timeline helped to achieve the ‘internal coherence as experienced by’ the interviewees (Atkinson 2002, 133–135). The national research assistants attended several interviews and provided language interpretation when interviewees were not fluent in English. After this on-the-job training, they conducted small numbers of interviews individually. The quality of the interview data could vary depending on the interviewer (nationality and gender), language and interpretation used, and presence of others during the interviews. Thus, the researchers discussed the interview data to reduce potential asymmetry and bias. Interviews were recorded and transcribed or noted, then analysed using thematic analysis, including the process of identifying the information relevant to the research questions, coding the data, organising patterns and themes, and reviewing and defining the themes (Braun and Clarke 2006). Quality and credibility in the research was sought through triangulation: combining different methods such as life story interviews, stakeholder interviews and document analysis to check the consistency of the findings as well as having multiple analysts, as the interview data and interpretation were discussed and reflected amongst the researchers.

Pathways to second chance education

This section briefly discusses the findings on how learners lost their schooling but obtained an SCE. At first, it condenses three individual stories as an illustration of the diverse experiences. While all the interviewees encountered multiple obstacles causing educational disruption, five barriers are identified as the most impactful in each story (Table 1): the systematic discrimination in progression from primary to secondary education before 1994 (eight), different challenges from being refugees and subsequent repatriation (six), poverty, often related to losing their parent/s (six), family problems (two) and the genocide and violence (one). The compressed stories demonstrate the three most prominent barriers for education, namely poverty, discrimination and refugeehood, and are selected from three different pathways that the section examines afterwards: the catch-up programme (CU), private candidate (PC) and individual school attendance (IN). As shown in Table 1, older interviewees (35 to 61 years old) stopped schooling predominantly due to discrimination and refugeehood long before the genocide and sought an SCE through the private candidate in Kigali while most of younger interviewees (25 to 33 years old) faced poverty as they had lost their family members around the genocide and joined the catch-up programme in various locations. The current education system in Rwanda follows a 6-3-3-4 structure: six years of primary education (P1 – P6), three years of lower secondary education (S1 – S3), three years of upper secondary education (S4 – S6) and an average of four years of higher education. National examinations are held at the end of primary education, lower secondary education (O-level) and upper secondary education (A-level) (MINEDUC 2010). However, the length of primary education in these stories range from six to eight years depending on when and which country they studied.

Individual life stories

CU4 (26 years, male) lost his parents and started primary school late. He dropped out in P2 as his grandmother died and the family who took him in could not send him to school. When he was 17, he heard about the catch-up programme, which was free, short and for anybody, and decided to attend with a friend of the same age. Once started, he became motivated by studying with friends and finished the programme in three years. He continued to secondary education through 9YBE and 12YBE and completed them in five years. He supported himself by earning through farming and writing poems. This story points to the loss of family members resulting in poverty and school dropout. Studying literacy skills at the catch-up school enabled him to write poems for cash prizes and motivated him for secondary education.

PC2 (42 years, male) could not go to secondary school after P8 due to discrimination and felt injustice and hurt. Later, he became a taxi driver in Kigali. When he heard about the private candidate centre in 2005, he joined there to study from S3 level and achieved A-level. He was 31 and paid his fees from his income.

When I went to [private candidate school], I was surprised because I met so many people who had missed the [educational] chance. We were around 1000 people and found all the things we wanted to learn.

He is one of the eight interviewees who encountered the discrimination before 1994. He was determined to reclaim his education which had been denied unfairly and grabbed the chance when it arose.

IN1 (38 years, male) was born in Rwanda, finished P7, and continued to a teacher training course. When he was 16 in S2, the genocide happened, and he fled to the DRC with his family. When they were in a refugee camp, there was no educational provision. He kept fleeing to neighbouring countries with other refugees until 1997 when they were repatriated. All this time, he continued reading when he was not working for survival because he loved studying. He could not resume schooling because the mandatory reorientation programme for returning Rwandans had already ceased. When he was 20, he started studying from S2 at a secondary school that an individual opened for those, who repatriated late, like him. He passed O-level and continued to a boarding secondary school for A-level. To cover the costs, he did manual labour during the evenings and holidays.

[Studying like that] seems to be difficult, but [it was] very easy compared to the life we experienced in Congo.

This compressed story informs the educational interruption due to refugeehood and the limitations of EiE. He strongly desired an education simply because he loved to study. He also perceived studying as a way to become open-minded and useful in society.

Catch-up programme

All seven interviewees who attended the catch-up programme completed primary education and continued to mainstream lower secondary education. Four of them achieved higher secondary education. They were relatively young when they attended the programme, ranging from 16 to 25. The dominant barrier for educational disruption was poverty (five), followed by family problems (one) and discrimination before 1994 (one) (Table 1). While they attributed their successful completion of the programme to encouragement and support from family members, teachers or their classmates as well as confidence in their academic performance, they also faced many challenges. Despite being mature and motivated, they had limited time to study, received inadequate quality of teaching in some cases, struggled with English as a medium of instruction after the 2009 policy, felt discouraged without financial support to progress to secondary education and experienced the public shame of studying as adults. For the last point, CU7 (41 years, male) recounted:

The people in my village laughed at me saying ‘See, he goes to school when he is old.’ It did not discourage me because I knew what I wanted. I had the purpose of going there.

Private candidates

13 interviewees completed upper secondary education in the private candidate centres and passed A-level. Eleven of them continued to study at university. They were between 23 and 52 years old when they started studying for private candidate, thus older than the catch-up graduates. The barriers they experienced also differ from the catch-up graduates (Table 1): discrimination before 1994 (six) and refugeehood (five) are dominant, while poverty (one) and the genocide and violence (one) exist. Those who were excluded from secondary education due to the discrimination ended up going to vocational schools or dropping out from unaffordable private schools. The interviewees who were in exile could not complete their education as they were marginalised and suffered from poverty. Their school experiences in the host countries vary from having to use a false name to access education, attending school classes only for Rwandan refugees, to being called Rwandans by teachers and other students, meaning you are nothing and not welcomed.

The interviewees attributed four factors to the successful completion of their SCE through a private candidate, namely their ability to pay the fees from their income, studying in the evenings, their determination to complete the long-desired education and the supportive learning environment offered by the school and classmates in the same situation. Studying in the evenings was crucial for an orphan returnee (PC6):

Maybe I can save and go back to school. But when I go back to school, when I have a good job here, I lose this. I lost it, and maybe I don’t have a chance to go back there.

Another returnee (PC13) was committed to study because ‘many years have been wasted’ in her intermittent education because of poverty, losing family members and unplanned pregnancy. Two male interviewees refrained from getting married until they achieved their education:

I didn’t want to get married because I knew if I got married and had children it will tie me down and prevent me from going to school (PC7).

However, most of the interviewees were older adults and faced three broad challenges to complete their studies, including the limited time to study, studying in English as the new medium of instruction and meeting the private candidate eligibility. The private candidate eligibility included presenting school certificates they had lost or had a false name as well as having O-level following the new regulation of 2013.

Individual attendance

Three interviewees obtained their SCE individually by attending local secondary school or attending a specially setup secondary school for returned refugees. They returned to study when they were 17, 20 and 37 years old. The barriers for educational disruption vary, from discrimination before 1994, family problems to refugeehood.

Motivations for second chance education

This section discusses the learners’ multiple motivations to pursue an SCE which also indicate the meaning of education perceived by the interviewees in their context. The motivations are grouped into four categories (Table 1): cognitive rewards (four), skills, qualifications and livelihood (13), normative value (15) and restoration (10). Except for the first category of cognitive rewards, the other categories are extrinsic motivations.

The first category of cognitive rewards as intrinsic motivation was mentioned by three private candidate and one independent school attendance interviewees. They simply liked to study, for example:

You learn things you don’t know. And when you are learning, it opens your mind. It means [that] you grow up in your mind. That’s why I like […] learning (PC6).

This motivation is felt regardless of potential benefits such as employment and income or ‘external regulations’ like requirement (Ryan and Deci 2000b, 72). One interviewee stressed this nature of his motivation:

Because I was a businessman and had some money, there was nothing that forced me to go back to school (PC7).

The intrinsic motivation theory recognises the natural motivational propensity in cognitive, social and physical development (Ryan and Deci 2000a, 56) although donors tend to neglect these non-financial rewards by viewing education narrowly as an investment.

Secondly, 13 interviewees across the three categories of the interviewees desired to pursue an SCE to obtain or enhance skills and qualifications for their livelihoods as extrinsic motivations. They view education as a means to gain sufficient income to sustain themselves and their families. This externally regulated motivation appeared particularly strong amongst orphans, as they have nobody to depend on. For instance, the orphan returnee (PC6), mentioned earlier, could not afford to resume his education (S2), when he returned to Rwanda at the age of 14. He patiently waited until he was 23 to join the private candidate centre, while working at a bank. He recalled:

As an orphan, I say ‘My god, thank you, lord.’ And now, I am sure I survive in this country. Even outside of this country, I can defend myself. I can get even other jobs […] because I have my [A-level certificate].

This motivation was also driven by the changing labour market during the rapid post-genocide development. As higher skills and qualifications, often A-level and English language skills, were required to obtain or maintain a job, many individuals sought A-level qualifications through private candidate. One interviewee (PC12) testified that she lost her job as a warehouse manager because she did not have an A-level at the time, and another interviewee corroborated:

My country was growing fast. Say, in a few days, when you don’t have that [A-level certificate] I could lose my job. And it is what is happening now (PC6).

Also, some interviewees desired education to do their job better and fit with their chosen profession, which led to promotion in some cases. Some others aspired for education based on their observation of educated people who demonstrate certain attributes, including analytical, organisational, leadership and problem solving skills. For instance:

I used to see the men and women who studied. They enjoyed a good life. They have jobs. They looked smart, you know. They can lead people and do things better (PC7).

This extrinsic motivation can be ‘self-determined’ through ‘identification’ of a developmental goal(s) that is personally important (Ryan and Deci 2000b, 72).

Thirdly, the normative value of education was the most cited motivation by 15 interviewees across the three categories of the interviewees. These respondents reiterated their desire to be useful to others and in society and considered that they could become useful by obtaining an education. The female returnee (PC13), mentioned before, had a long intermitted educational journey and explained:

If you are educated, you can be the help to yourself. You can be a useful person to the country, […] even to your family. You can get a good job and bring up other people in the family to study to be what they want in the future […] I wanted to study so that I can reach somewhere, where I can even […] help others in my hand. […] The reason why I persisted to go back to school is because I wanted to be someone else who is able, at least, to bring up my young relatives, especially in studying.

Moreover, the interviewees seem to consider that education enables personal development, and this will make them useful. Many of them mentioned ‘opening their minds’ through education, which empowers them to change and improve things, solve problems and lead their lives for themselves. The abovementioned interviewee, who returned from the DRC (IN1), explained that:

Education means to open the mind of someone in order to be useful [in] his society. So, in my mind, I think education is an act of opening someone’s mind for him to be useful wherever he or she goes.

These interviewees explained how they perceived their usefulness to others and the society, ranging from helping their family and others to engaging in community reconciliation or even in politics. One street child (CU3) was persuaded to study by the faith-based catch-up school when he was 14 years old and became a teacher at that school. He reflected on how his education made him able to help other children:

Because of the good things they [the school] did for me, I now have a purpose [in] helping other children.

In contrast to being useful, those without education are viewed as being useless and shameful, especially because the country has been developing rapidly after the genocide and more people have been educated in the recent past. Two interviewees articulated how lack of education affected them in the past in this regard:

I used to walk along the road and think everything was useful, but only I was useless. I said, oh my goodness, even a dog can keep a house. What about me? […] The society I lived in especially motivated me. If you are not educated in Rwanda, you are something else. You are not even in a good position to fit into society. If you don’t have [academic qualification] papers, no one will recognise you. This was the major factor. […] Another thing was a shame. You know, to live in a Rwandan society when you are not educated, my friend, you are a shameful guy. In Rwanda, if you are not an educated man or boy, to get a good girlfriend is even difficult (PC7).

This period we are in, as the country is developing, and more people are getting education, I would have been lost with ignorance. I must be on the same level as others. The church members, in which I am a leader, were getting more educated than me (IN2).

Without having an education, many interviewees also felt the shame of being dependent and a burden on others. Some, who studied at the catch-up programme and continued to secondary education, believed that they would have been in negative situations and influence if they were not in education. The motivation for being useful can be seen as the most autonomous model of extrinsic motivation as it has been assessed by and integrated with the interviewees’ perception of normative values (Ryan and Deci 2000b, 72–73). Moreover, it is influenced by the actual or perceived presence of others and is based on how the interviewees understood their connection to society. In this regard, it demonstrates a sociological aspect of motivations.

The fourth motivation is restoration, mentioned by eight private candidate and two independent school attendance interviewees. This motivation is strongly connected to the systematic discrimination suffered before 1994 (five) as the interviewees felt a very strong sense of injustice and were determined to reclaim their right to education when the opportunity arose. It is, thus, one of the enabling factors for the private candidates to be successful as discussed in the previous section. The interviewee (PC2), whose story was introduced earlier, articulated his desire to retrieve what he had lost:

I wanted to reach as far as I can. That was my target. I wanted to reach to where I missed because of the bad system we had before.

The desire to reclaim the missed educational opportunity was echoed by another male interviewee (PC4), who completed secondary education even though he already had a job. He felt that:

I was missing my proper chance by the bad attitude of our leaders. […] This reason, I didn’t forget. […] After liberation [of the country, it was] for the accomplishment of my ambition.

Another interviewee (PC3) emphasised her disappointment when she could not continue to secondary school: she felt like committing suicide.

Two interviewees viewed obtaining an education as a way of restarting their life from past destruction and were anxious to complete their unfinished education. Similarly, others reflected that education restored their hope for the future and humanity and enabled them to pick up and continue with life:

This was the starting point of who I am today. Going back to a school built my hope for life and showed me that my dreams could come to reality (PC13).

Education brought hope for me. […] Education restored my relationships with others. […] Education built humanity in me - I cannot take revenge, for example (IN3).

Restoration is also an extrinsic motivation as the interviewees’ desired outcomes are formulated by integrating their perceived values, such as justice. In summary, the various motivations described above explain how the interviewees made sense of their experiences. They reflected on the disruption of their education and how they valued and aspired for an SCE in their subjective realities. It is crucial to note that the SCE was not desired simply because of the extrinsic motivation to improve their livelihood. There are other extrinsic motivations based on their understanding of normative values and need for restoration as well as the intrinsic motivation for cognitive rewards.

Conclusion

This paper has reviewed the context of education and conflict in Rwanda and analysed 23 life story interviews to identify how and why learners had to stop their schooling then obtained an SCE later as an adult. The learners faced various barriers for attaining education, not only during the genocide when schools were closed, but also from discrimination based on ethnicity, geography and religion or being in exile abroad before the genocide as well as vulnerabilities including family loss after the genocide. Unlike the sole focus of EiE on emergencies, severe discrimination before the genocide affected education for many young people. It is important to highlight that the post-genocide education sector reform has opened education to all for the first time in Rwandan history although there are still some barriers to accessing education. Considering how education had been used to create and maintain the rift in society, as outlined in the third section, this was a significant transition for the Rwandans. While it is not possible to generalise learners’ education paths and motivations for undertaking an SCE, due to the small amount and the nature of data, the findings feature some notable observations and implications for future policy and programming as well as academic research.

Regarding policy and programming, flexible and affordable SCE pathways are crucial for adult learners who missed or were excluded from an education due to conflict. This became clear as EiE was not available or accessible for many, demonstrated by the stories of the refugees and others who had been prevented from achieving an education before the genocide. Most interviewees benefitted from the accelerated primary education (catch-up programme) or private candidate as an SCE. However, the data from the programmes supporting education needs in the post-genocide period, including the catch-up programme, were too scarce to provide a comprehensive picture or trend. Moreover, there is still a huge gap in our knowledge of the educational journeys of those who were affected by conflict and had intermittent education.

Nonetheless, the findings from the small samples suggest three key issues from these provisions. It was noticeable that achieving lower secondary education poses a challenge to many, often because of the costs associated with school materials and boarding. The lack of support to obtain lower secondary education was a discouraging factor for the catch-up programme students. Moreover, private candidate is not available for O-levels. The second issue was related to the transition between different education systems. As discussed in the fifth section, providing academic certificates can be a problem for returnees, and studying in a different language poses a challenge to many. Finally, there seems to be shame attached to adults needing to study at the primary education level. However, the implementation of the catch-up programme throughout the country may change people’s perception of studying when they see the possibility to study and benefit from education at an older age. This change of perception can be potentially significant as the concept of an SCE may become more accepted in times of stability in Rwanda.

For the academic community, the analysis of the motivations for the SCE presents both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. However, intrinsic motivations are largely overlooked in the EiE circle. Regarding extrinsic motivations, there are different levels of internalisation and various outcomes desired by the learners. The externally regulated motivation for skills and qualification for livelihood was often attributed to the status of being an orphan or poor and the changing labour market in Rwanda. The most cited motivation, that of becoming useful in society, indicates the importance of sociological understanding of motivations. This is currently disregarded in the EiE field and requires a subjective and contextual understanding of motivation. The motivation for restoration may resonate with the EiE’s rationales of education as a right and a protection. It was evident that many learners wished to reclaim the rightful education they had been denied through the discrimination before the genocide. Some learners were aware of education’s ‘array of protections’ (Sommers 2009, 35–36) from negative behaviours and influence which impact on their lives. More importantly, for many, going back to education was to start their lives where they had left and where they can restore hope and humanity, hence central to post-conflict recovery. This extrinsic motivation has a profound implication when considering education development as an essential for post-conflict recovery within the EiE field. More specifically, SCE requires greater attention.

Acknowledgments

This research was conducted with the support of the Protestant Institute of Art and Social Science (PIASS) in Rwanda and their researcher, Mr Emmanuel NIYIBIZI.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Research Institute under the ‘Obtaining a Second Chance Education during and after Conflict’ research project, 2015–2020.