Colleges placement service chief ousted

The chief executive of Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service John Muraguri has been suspended regarding the quality of students admitted.

The board met on Tuesday under the chairmanship of Mr David Ndetei and also terminated the contract of a senior ICT consultant suspected to have played a key role in the placement of unqualified students in universities and colleges.

Ms Monica Ng’ang’a, who has been the deputy chief executive, will be acting as the CEO.

The board also commissioned a forensic audit of students admitted to various universities and colleges to get to the bottom of the matter.

The board placed 74,389 students in 32 public universities this year and another 12,096 government sponsored in 29 private universities while 12,000 were placed in colleges.

At the moment the cut off point for entry to universities is a mean grade of B (plain) of 60 points for boys and B- for girls.

With the admission of more students to private universities, the grade was lowered to B- of 58 points for boys and B- of 56 points for girls.

According to the 2015 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education results, a total of 165,766 candidates attained the minimum university entry grade of C+ and above.

Sources at the board disclosed to Sunday Nation that the report on the suspension and allegations against Mr Muraguri had been submitted to the Education Cabinet secretary.

The board chairman declined to discuss the issue. Mr Muraguri was suspended while attending a one-week seminar in Singapore.

When contacted, said he was not aware of the changes. Board members said that they had not cleared him for the trip.