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Tough rules to curb leaks as KCPE starts
Mary Wangui Kihumba, an internally displaced candidate at the Nakuru Showground, rehearses ahead of the KCPE examinations which start countrywide on Tuesday. This year, 695,704 pupils will sit for the national examination. Photo/JOSEPH KIHERI
Exam authorities have introduced tough measures to curb cheating as over 695,000 Standard Eight candidates sit for the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education exams that start on Tuesday.
As part of the strategy to reduce cheating, school heads and supervisors have been barred from accessing spare examination papers.
However, they will be allowed to use mobile phones in exam centres to communicate with their superiors.
Candidates are banned from carrying mobile phones to examination centres, and those caught are regarded to have cheated and their results will be cancelled.
Delivering papers
Other new measures announced to prevent cheating include delivering papers to exam centres three days before the exams. In previous years, the papers were delivered two weeks before the exam day.
Additionally, teachers with disciplinary records would be barred from invigilating the examinations.
However, Kenya National Examinations Council boss Paul Wasanga said the measures to curb cheating can only “become effective with the cooperation of parents, candidates, and exam officials”.
The council has adopted other tactical measures, including scrapping some features in exam papers, which would have in the past made it easy to identity the scripts to be sent to examination centres on any given day.
The colours of the question papers have been varied for enhanced security. Some of the papers are white while others are green.
Of the 695,704 candidates, about 1,000 were adversely affected by post-election violence that rocked the country between December last year and February this year.
In Nakuru, 470 candidates will be sitting the exams in camps for displaced families, while another 280 will be in other camps in Eldoret.
A special exam centre has been set up in Eldoret for some of the candidates who were displaced by the violence in which 1,133 people were killed.
Seventy-six candidates are expected to be ferried from Central Province to sit the exams in the Rift Valley, which was hardest hit by the chaos.
In Naivasha, an 84-year-old inmate is among those who will be sitting the exams. And in some areas, the exams could be adversely affected by the heavy rains, which have resulted in the deaths of at least 11 people.
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Sending papers to the schools just three days before the exam could turn out to be a logistical nightmare for schools that are not within the vicinity of the KNEC. It is a momentous task trying to control human error and it is nearly impossible to completely alleviate cheating in exams. Achieving full cooperation from parents, candidates and exam officials is an utopic idea if there ever was. Exams need to be a small part of the general assesment of children in school. What about good behaviour, club affiliations, sports and community work making up part of the final grade?
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The law requiring primary school children to sit and pass KCPE tests is unconstitutional. This is why : Candidates like Wangui(pictured) will face unfair set of challenges relative to other pupils sitting for the same examination. All candidates ought to be offered equal chances and circumstances for natural justice to prevail. Kenya needs to come up with better tools to gauge pupils performance and more importantly identify what makes hundreds of thousands of pupils to just ‘ fail’.
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Yes we can ! keep us informed of those candidates from the camps that will perform well.We shall sponsor them to the highest institutions of learning in this world to realise their dream.When one door is closes, another one opens for the innocent.IDP's, we shall overcome !
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