- Their lecturer never returned the scripts or submitted marks for the exam, a lapse that left the university with no records to grade 72 students.
- The students had told the lower court that missing their graduation ceremony made them look like failures in the eyes of their families, friends and the wider society.
- The dispute traces back to 2012, when the affected students, then enrolled in a diploma programme in Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering
The Court of Appeal has slashed the compensation owed to 21 former Technical University of Kenya (TUK) students whose graduation was delayed after their examination scripts went missing, even as the court affirmed that the institution had breached their constitutional right to fair administrative action.
Justices Daniel Musinga, Mumbi Ngugi and Francis Tuiyott cut the payout from Sh148,764 to Sh50,000 for each student, ruling that the higher figure awarded by the High Court had no evidentiary basis. The judges, however, let stand the finding that TUK dragged its feet in handling the crisis, denying the students the timely, efficient administrative process guaranteed under Article 47 of the Constitution.
The dispute traces back to 2012, when the affected students, then enrolled in a diploma programme in Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, sat a compulsory mathematics paper. Their lecturer never returned the scripts or submitted marks for the exam, a lapse that left the university with no records to grade 72 students. TUK’s response was to order the entire cohort to re-sit the paper, a decision that pushed back their graduation.
In its judgment, the appellate bench held that the university had every opportunity to sort out the missing scripts before the students finished their coursework, but failed to move with urgency. “It is a settled principle of good administrative action, codified in Article 47, that it must be expeditious and efficient,” the judges said, adding that TUK ought to have weighed its investigation against the students’ legitimate expectation of graduating on schedule.
“The University should have always kept its eye on the clock so that whatever action it took would not jeopardise the students’ expectation to graduate on time,” the court stated, faulting the institution for allowing the matter to drag on unresolved.
Compounding the delay, the court noted, was that criminal charges were brought against the lecturer only roughly a year and a half after the disputed examination, a gap the judges described as proof of “laxity and inefficiency” on the university’s part.
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While the university had a genuine interest in tracing the missing scripts and safeguarding the integrity of its examinations, the judges said, that interest could not be pursued at the expense of the students’ academic timelines.
The Court of Appeal parted ways with the High Court on one key point: whether the delay violated the students’ right to dignity. The students had told the lower court that missing their graduation ceremony made them look like failures in the eyes of their families, friends and the wider society. The appellate judges accepted that the claim had been properly pleaded but found the students had not backed it up with sufficient evidence, and struck out that finding.
The High Court had calculated its Sh148,764 figure on the assumption that the graduates would take about seven months to find employment after finishing their studies, a projection the appellate judges dismissed as speculative. “There was no material at all that was placed before the court upon which it could work a vindicatory or compensatory relief,” the judges said, before settling on the flat Sh50,000 sum for each of the 21 students to compensate them for the Article 47 violation alone.
The Court of Appeal left intact the High Court’s order that TUK pay the students’ legal costs at that stage, but directed that each side bear its own costs for the appeal, handing both parties a partial win in the long-running dispute.
By Masaki Enock
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