Dear Editor, I read with great interest an article in your paper where the Education ministry announced the reforms in exams setting and answering style. To me, it sounded like giving a face-lift to a decades-weakened country’s education system, though few people deem it as the old style. The Rwanda National Examination Council (RNEC) should be clear and straightforward to adopt the new style that will pave way for open questions. RNEC’s administration should be neutral and precise to change the old style that has been characterised by closed questions where students have been giving narrow and never-thought-out answers. Now is when students will be able to write detailed essays on given questions, unlike the old style that has been limiting them to brief and specific answers. Furthermore, the said change in exams needs to be exactly what the ministry’s RNEC has promised to stamp out – the tendency of cramming teachers’ notes by students. We aim at training them how to look and select appropriate information themselves, he said over the weekend at the release of 2007 Senior Six exams results at RNEC head office in Remera. The State Minister in Charge of Primary and Secondary Education should make sure that this year’s national examination results do not contain any shortfall, since the days of narrowness are over. Students are expected to explicitly put across their knowledge capabilities during examination periods and it’s up to teachers to make sure students fulfil that. Kicukiro-Kigali
