Kigali Infant School in Kanombe, a Kigali City suburb, has been closed by Gasabo District authorities over lack of legal requirements and congested classrooms.

In July, a visiting delegation of UK’s Conservative Party including the party leader, David Cameron, together with volunteers on their entourage spent time renovating the school.

"The school has been operating with large numbers of pupils in classrooms contrary to education rules" said a senior official from Gasabo District.

The Ministry of Education, as part of the ongoing education sector reforms, insists that a classroom should have a maximum of 45 pupils.

"However, Kigali Infant School had exceeded that number by a big margin," the official said without indicating how big the margin was. The school had 262 pupils.

The school’s director, Eugene Rudasingwa, said: "It is true that classroom blocks are not enough compared to the number of students, but we are in negotiations with district authorities to have the school re-opened."

"For now, we are renting some blocks just 100 metres from the closed school, and soon the school will re-open after negotiations with district officials."

He added that pupils whose school term was affected by the closure will have an extra nine days to make up for the lost days. Twenty-one volunteers from the UK’s opposition Conservative Party volunteered at the school for two weeks before their leader, Cameron, visited it during his visit to Rwanda last year.

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