Kenya exam body to send results instantly

As soon as Education minister Sam Ongeri on Tuesday releases the results of 330,000 candidates who sat last year’s Form Four exams, mobile phones will start ringing to deliver the grades.

The Kenya National Examinations Council plans to use an innovative system to make it easier, faster and cheaper for candidates to get their results. The service was unveiled last week and if it works as promised, will help relieve some of the anxiety of getting the results in the traditional way.

Results texted

Candidates who subscribe to the short message service (SMS) will be texted their results immediately after the official release. The exams function will be held at the Kenya Institute of Education in Nairobi at 9am.

According to council secretary Paul Wasanga, Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination candidates or their relatives had a chance to subscribe for the results service by sending a text to 2228 from their Safaricom or Zain numbers.

The text message is supposed to contain the student’s index number. The results text will be charged after delivery of the result. It is the first time that the exams council is using the subscription system.

In previous years, parents and candidates sent messages immediately after the results were announced, jamming the system. Those who have not subscribed to the SMS service can get the results from the Knec website, www.examscouncil.or.ke.

Alternatively, candidates can choose the old way of getting their grades by going to schools and getting them from their head teachers. District education officers will pick up the results from KIA, take them back to their districts, from where headteachers will collect them. For far-flung, rural districts, the process can take long.

At Tuesday’s function, new Knec chairman Kabiru Kinyanjui will be handing over the results to Prof Ongeri for the first time. He was appointed to the position in February, replacing former Moi University vice-chancellor Raphael Munavu, who has served two terms of three years each.

Prof Munavu’s predecessor, Prof George Eshiwani, was vice-chancellor of Kenyatta University, meaning Prof Kinyanjui is the first non-vice chancellor to hold the position in a long time.

Candidates performed poorly in the 2008 exam compared to previous years. This was blamed on the post-election violence early in the year, when some students were displaced from their schools. Other schools failed to reopen following the clashes. Candidates performed poorly in 15 out of the 28 subjects offered in the exams.

They did not perform well in English, Kiswahili, biology, physics and chemistry, which are required for university admission and entry into some professions. However, the candidates did reasonably well in mathematics, Islamic religious education, arts, German and aviation.

In November, Knec dismissed reports of exam irregularities after the media reported that some questions were leaked to candidates in some schools. It is expected that should performance be better than last year, then about 60,000 students will miss university admissions.

For 2008 candidates, whose university selection ended last week, 2,073 candidates were picked from 72,000 who had qualified. A minimum of C+ mean grade scored from seven subjects is all one needs to qualify for university.

But due to shortage of space in the seven public universities, the Joint Admissions Board — in charge of selections — fixes a cut-off point, locking out of the system more than 90 per cent of qualified students.