• Exam board rules out remarking

Some students who sat for this year’s national advanced level examinations have been storming the premises of the Rwanda National Examinations Council (RNEC) in a bid to verify their marks. Apparently, some of these students have spent about a week in their attempt.

Elise Uwizeye, who first sat for S.6 final exams in 2007 and failed, decided to have another go at them in 2008 only for them to be worse. 

"I can’t believe the results I got. How could I get zeros? Basing on how I did the exams, I know I passed. They were easier than those of 2007,” she said angrily. She has been to the council’s offices in Remera three times.

"They told us that they cannot show us our papers,” she lamented, adding that a friend of hers on verification discovered that her points were lower than she had scored.  She did not disclose the friend or the time that happened but insisted she was saying the truth.

Furaha Dusenge Kamanzi who was a private candidate in Gisenyi did accounts. She passed but there were no grades and marks shown on the results.

"I passed but when I checked my results I saw that there were no grades shown. There was only a pass; you never know I might have even passed better. So I want these people at the council to show me my results so that I know how I scored,” she said.

The head of the examination council, John Rutayisire, did not mince words.

"Those who failed have failed. There is no need to remark their papers,” he said.

He explained that in the past, a different system was used whereby the more transcripts a teacher marked, the more they earned. Accordingly, this increased chances of students getting points which were not theirs.

He said that the system has changed and that they are now using what they call a conveyor belt where more than 5 teachers mark one paper.

"Actually what happened in the marking was that one teacher marked a paper and then passed it to another who also remarked it, and you find that one paper went through more than 5 teachers’ hands. So there are no cases of either under marking or giving students points that don’t belong to them,” Rutayisire explained.

Ends