A total of 44,176 Primary Leaving Examination (PLE) pupils and 16,666 Ordinary Level candidates, who sat their national exams this year, are set to repeat their respective grades due to poor performance in national examinations, the Ministry of Education has announced. That means that 17.5 per cent of the total 251,906 who wrote their 2019-20 PLE exams and 13.6 per cent of the 121,626 who did their O’ Levels will have to repeat the school year. All the 60,842 students came in the ‘uncategorised’ fifth grading category, and won’t be allowed to advance to the next level. Valentine Uwamariya, the Education Minister, said Monday that the decision was taken in line with a resolution from the 17th edition of the National Leadership Retreat (Umwiherero) of February last year, which concerned the termination of the automatic promotion policy. She was speaking during the official release of the PLE and O’ Level results at the Ministry of Education headquarters in Kacyiru. “The next step,” Uwamariya said, “will be to trace the students and their schools, and then there will be a special programme to help them improve, in collaboration with REB (Rwanda Education Board), districts and schools.” The automatic or social promotion policy had been rolled out back in 2011 with a view to help promote school enrolment and retention. But the policy had come under heavy scrutiny in recent years with suggestions that it was detrimental to education quality and ultimately affected the quality of graduates. None of the affected students will be allowed to enrol even in private schools as was the case previously, the minister warned. Decision draws criticism In the hours following the release of the results, social media users questioned the decision, some saying it could force many affected students to drop out of school. But Uwamariya said they were cognisant of the fact that the new policy might result in increased dropout rates, promising they were looking into how to prevent it. “We can’t ignore that possibility…We will put in much effort in tracing the students and to know their parents, as well as work hand in hand with grassroots leaders to encourage the students to go back to school. We hope that since there is a special plan to support them they won’t be discouraged.” Gaspard Twagirayezu, the State Minister in charge of Primary and Secondary Education, later Monday dismissed suggestions that the timing of enforcing the decision might not be the best considering that Covid-19 had led to lengthy school closures leaving candidates unable to adequately prepare for national exams. “We can’t attribute it to Covid, because if you look at the overall performance of students, you will find that there is no difference between this year and the previous years,” he told The New Times. According to the results, overall PLE performance this year was 82.5 per cent, up from 81.6 per cent in 2019 and 81.4 in 2018. But O’ Level performance dropped slightly to 86.3 per cent from 86.6 per cent in 2019 although it’s higher than the performance of 2018 (83.7). While those who failed PLE exams account for 17.5 per cent of the total primary candidates, 18.4 per cent fell short in 2019, with 13.6 per cent of O’ Level candidates failing compared to 13.4 per cent in 2019. “When you look at the total number (of those who are supposed to repeat a grade) you may think that they are so many, but when you break it down to the school level, they are manageable numbers and follow-up will be easy,” Twagirayezu said.
