At least 1000 students have petitioned the National Examination and School Inspection Authority (NESA) seeking remarking of their national exams scripts, claiming they were awarded grades that did not reflect their performance. 

Some of the cases have pointed to possible serious flaws in the marking and/or grading process, including a case where an entire class at a Rwamagana school received the same grade in one paper.

A few students have even claimed that some of their scores were suddenly changed in the system after they had filed complaints with NESA, raising further serious concerns about the credibility of the whole process.

Petitions for remarking have come in from recent Senior Six candidates as well as their counterparts in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) and Teachers Training Centres (TTCs), suggesting that the problem is widespread. Indeed, there is no evidence that the same problem did not affect recent Primary Leaving Examination and Ordinary Level candidates as well – with some 60,000 students in both sections forced to repeat the school year.

Yet, NESA doesn’t look inclined to deal with each of the complaints, instead deciding to waive the fee that a petitioner was required to pay to have their exam script remarked, in a bid to avoid scenarios where they’d be required to refund the money.

And, neither has it managed to explain the matter to the public, with the head of the agency avoiding responding to media inquiries, which did not help the situation.

Now, instead of ordering a thorough investigation into the matter, the Ministry of Education appears to be papering over the cracks, with the minister only promising to change the grading format going forward.

So, how have they arrived at the decision to change the "grading format” without conducting a thorough investigation into the issue and ascertaining what exactly went wrong, and then communicating it to the public?

Transparency is critical in such situations.

It is one thing to revisit the grading format and another to explain to the public what went wrong with the format this time round – and how different it is from the previous grading formats. While the pandemic means that the examinations and marking were carried out in extraordinary circumstances, the virus did not tamper with neither the examinations nor the grading process.

National examinations are about the future of students – and, by extension, the nation’s – and must be treated with utmost care and prudence.

We call on the Ministry of Education to get to the bottom of the exams fiasco, communicate the findings and take appropriate corrective measures.

Only then shall they restore public confidence in the integrity of the national examination, marking and grading system and format.