By Agnes Orang’o
National Assembly Education committee probing whether cheating took place during the 2022 KCSE has established that examination leakage begun way before the papers reach the security containers manned by police.
The committee led by Tinderet MP Julius Melly met the education stakeholders in Machakos town on Wednesday where several issues were raised concerning the topic.
Melly told the media that it has been established that the police guarded exams that had already been leaked.
“As a committee, we have noted with concern the commercialization of exams both public and private schools go to a great length to pay to access the exams beforehand,” said Melly, adding;
“We have also noted that the multi-agency team that handles exams more so the security team has been hailed to have done a good job by the public. The exams are not stolen at the containers, because they are well guarded, it starts way before the exams reach the containers. This means several officers and examination council handlers have been edited by the way the marking schemes get leaves before exams.”
Melly noted that lack of stringent action taken on those caught cheating has also contributed to increases in the vice.
According to him, some officers have taken their work casually to the extent of failing to report instances of cheating even when examiners bring it to their attention.
“Secondly, some institutions and the whole country itself have attached a lot of premium on the KCSE certificate which has also contributed to exam cheating. That is why that is the only exam affected by leakage,” he said.
Musembi Katuku, Kenya Union of Teachers (KNUT) Executive Secretary for Machakos county told Education News that low pay to examiners is a factor promoting exam leakage.
“This conversation is long overdue because we know exam cheating has been there for quite a while and as a union, we say that Kenya National Examination Council has not been able to manage exams effectively. KNEC may be underfunded because we have heard examiners who are teachers complain of low pay,” said Katuku.
Other factors include competitions by schools and ranking of schools by media among others.
The stakeholders recommended swapping principals during KCSE to curb the vice.
Machakos County Director of Education, Margaret Mwirigi, said that there were no cases of exam cheating recorded in the county and that the new CBC curriculum will end cheating because it focuses on competency.
The committee disclosed that the report about the findings will be available after a month and the stakeholders will be able to access it.
“We are not doing this for cosmetics, be sure we will have results after one month. We will ensure KNEC does the necessary changes to ensure the exam in the country has the necessary integrity. We are done with lower eastern heading to Mombasa covering eh coastal region then go to Northeastern,” said Melly.
