This year’s national examinations for both Advanced and Ordinary Level have started, and already there are reports of serious malpractises. Several people including teachers and students have been arrested in connection with tampering with examination rules and procedure, and outright cheating.There is no doubt that this vice should be stamped out with all possible speed, before it becomes a cancer that is threatening to eat up education systems of countries that have been stable for longer periods of time than Rwanda.

Cheating at examinations is a manifestation of ill-preparedness, and it is the fear of negative examination outcomes that normally force students to cheat.

In cases where teachers also know for a fact that they never helped their charges enough to prepare well for the said examinations, they will aid in this dastardly act, because blame for failure will be equally shared.

Another common motive for cheating is the fierce competitive spirit engendered by private schools.

There is a lot of positive publicity for schools that have allegedly performed excellently, because that is where parents will scramble to take their children. So such institutions will stop at nothing to post good results, and the result is messing up our education sector by compromising many other people to aid them cheat. This is high level crime and should therefore be treated as such.

Anyone who has ever been a student knows how bad it is for one to struggle throughout their lives preparing, and then another not-so-smart one comes along and just wants to reap where they did not sow.

You don’t even want him, at a very small level, craning their necks to peep at your answers! But now cheating is big time, being arranged and managed by serious people out to achieve lots more than just a mere individual wanting to get good grades.

It is commendable that the Rwanda National Examination Council is giving the issue the full attention it deserves, by deploying various security personnel to foil any intentions of cheating at schools.

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