Students who perform well in Rwanda’s national examinations are not automatically guaranteed admission to their first-choice schools, with NESA citing limited capacity and competition among applicants as key factors in school placement.
The National Examination and School Inspection Authority (NESA) says it considers three main factors when assigning students to secondary schools: their examination results, the number of places available and the schools they selected.
The explanation comes after some students and parents expressed dissatisfaction with school placements following the release of the national examination results.
NESA Director General Dr Bahati Bernard said performing well in the national examinations does not, by itself, guarantee a place at a student’s preferred school.
“When we finish grading, we place students in schools. We consider three main things: the marks a student got, the positions available in schools, and the choices of students who won the examination,” he said.
According to NESA, the first consideration is the number of places available at each school.
Schools inform NESA of the number of students they can accommodate, both for learners entering Senior One and those progressing to Senior Four. These available places determine how many students can be assigned to each school.
The second factor is competition for those places.
Some of Rwanda’s most popular schools received thousands of applications for only a small number of available places. GS Saint Aloys in Rwamagana, for example, received 28,221 requests for only 120 places.
Ecole des Sciences de Musanze received more than 22,000 requests for 105 places, while E.S. Kayonza Modern received more than 19,000 requests for 140 places.
College Saint André received 18,000 requests for 118 places, while Lycée de Kigali received more than 17,000 requests for just 65 places.
The third factor is students’ choices.
NESA considers the schools selected by students, but those preferences must be matched against available capacity and the number of other students competing for the same places.
This means that a student can achieve a strong examination result but still miss out on their first-choice school if the school has limited capacity and attracts a large number of applicants.
Most students will attend day schools
The intense competition for boarding-school places comes as the vast majority of students entering secondary education are being placed in day schools.
Education Minister Joseph Nsengimana said improving the quality of day-school education must therefore be a priority.
“We cannot improve the quality of education by focusing only on those 7%; we must also focus on the 93%,” he said.
He added that the government’s efforts to improve education quality should benefit all students, whether they attend boarding or day schools.
“For this reason, the programme to improve the quality of education must focus on all students, whether they attend boarding schools or day schools,” he said.
Rwanda had 4,996 schools during the 2024/25 academic year, including 1,576 public schools, 2,083 government-subsidised schools operating under partnership arrangements and 1,337 private schools.
