It was a scheme plotted long before the exams began and carried out in plain sight once the candidates had sat down in the examination rooms. A chain of coordination reaching from local government officials down to head teachers, invigilators, supervisors, and school staff, all operating under the guise of “helping the children.” That is how Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) spokesperson Thierry Murangira described the operation that led to the biggest national exams fraud ever recorded by the Ministry of Education. Over 7,100 primary school candidates were affected and have been ordered to retake the exam. ALSO READ: Key takeaways from 2025/26 PLE, O-Level national exams RIB has arrested 81 people suspected of playing various roles in the mass cheating that marred the 2025/26 Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE). Speaking on Saturday, September 4, when some of the suspects were paraded before the media, Murangira said the plot was hidden from the beginning. Recruiting “trustworthy” ones Cheating was reported in more than 250 examination rooms in the districts of Kirehe, Nyamasheke, Rubavu and To pull off the scheme, the conspirators first needed teachers they considered reliable, would keep the secret, and help execute the plan. This meant that were even willing to go against rules governing national examinations. Murangira explained that Rwanda’s National Examination and School Inspection Authority (NESA) explicitly bars Primary Six teachers, or anyone who teaches a Primary Six subject, from serving as invigilators or “floating invigilators” (staff who supervise multiple exam rooms and accompany candidates who step out, to prevent cheating). ALSO READ: Inside the sinister scheme that compromised national exams To get around this rule, school leaders allegedly falsified records and listed Primary Six teachers as teaching other grade levels and submitting these changed lists to education officers at sector and district level before the approved lists were sent to NESA. Investigators believe officials at the sector and district levels colluded with the head teachers, allowing the falsified lists to sail through as legitimate. How the fraud was carried out Murangira said that once these Primary Six teachers were positioned as floating invigilators, the mechanics were simple. A floating invigilator, for example a mathematics teacher, would photograph the exam paper, solve them quickly, and return to the room. There, the regular invigilator would stand guard at the entrance while the floating invigilator read out the answers for the candidates to copy down. The cracks in this system showed almost immediately, Murangira said. Because students ended up submitting suspiciously identical responses. If a question asked for three effects of the Genocide, and there could be 10 effects, the candidates provide the exact same answers, in the same order, Murangira explained. Let's say Life was the answer for another question. All candidates would write the answer and then one of them spelled the word in Kinyarwanda as Layifu, an inconsistency that immediately signaled someone was feeding them the answers. Investigators also found cases of candidates crossing out the original, sometimes the correct responses, to write in the one the invigilator had used. Murangira noted that even in rooms with candidates from different schools, these same arrangements, engineered by head teachers, were in place. Perhaps most troubling, he said, is that the very officials meant to prevent cheating were the ones enabling it. Case of Nyamasheke and Kirehe He highlighted that in Nyamasheke District, at the Groupe Scolaire Ruheru examination site, investigators uncovered a particularly elaborate setup. An invigilator would take a photo of the exam papers and send them to a librarian, who used AI tools to generate answers and print them out, one set per exam room. To make it even more elaborate, a school accountant, posed as a cleaner with legitimate access to the rooms, then distributed the printed answers to invigilators, who read them aloud to the candidates. Murangira stressed that this wasn’t improvised on the spot. It was a plan devised well in advance, with every participant aware of their assigned role, he said, adding it might have been happening for years. ALSO READ: National exams: Kirehe leads top-performing districts In Kirehe, the district vice mayor for social affairs allegedly went beyond the planning meetings that preceded the exams. On exam days, she visited sites in person to urge site managers to help the students, claiming she was acting on instructions from higher authorities. Site managers then passed the message down to invigilators. Murangira said this effort was linked to meeting Imihigo (local performance targets) in education. “When you analyze it, what they were after was a higher number of students passing, not the delivery of actual knowledge,” he said. In the national examination results announced on August 20, Kirehe emerged as the top performing district, securing the first place for a second consecutive time. A total of 286,579 candidates sat Primary Leaving Examinations. NESA reported that 82.2 per cent of candidates passed the examinations. Suspects face 1 to 10 years in prison Murangira noted that investigation into the fraud was ongoing. Those implicated face prosecution on three charges related to corruption. These are abuse of functions, breach of professional secrecy, and forgery, falsification, and use of forged documents. If convicted, they face sentences ranging from one to ten years, along with fines, depending on the specific offense.
