Teachers’ sacrifice and critical role lauded in good results

The critical role and sacrifice that teachers played in the administration of this year’s Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) was evident on Tuesday when the results were released.

The Teachers Service Commission Chief executive Nancy Macharia explained during the event how teachers were kept incommunicado during the process with head teachers waking up as early as 4am to collect examination materials.

“I commended teachers for accepting critical role of centre managers, which required them to wake up as early as 4am to be in containers and they did it in a splendid manners, waking up at 4am is not easy.

"They also prepared the candidates from nursery to Standard Eight and going even to mark the examination,” Mrs Macharia said.

POLITICS
She went on: “We are very proud of teachers for fantastic job, supervisors and invigilators who assisted the process by agreeing to implement tough examination rules including g remaining incommunicado as they were not required to have phones during the exams.”

“You can imagine some of them are mothers, others are fathers and you can imagine the anxiety of staying without phones and not disobeyed these rules until the exams were over and we appreciate them.”

Mrs Macharia said the improved performance in the national examination also indicate teachers are working as the year was not good due to high political temperatures.

CANDIDATES
However, Mrs Macharia cautioned those who engage in irregularities.

“We are appealing to a few errant teachers who failed to stick to professional ethics to style up,” she said.

Kenya National examination Council (Knec) chairman George Magoha lauded the teachers for the good work saying it was evident during monitoring of the examination.

“I saw candidates doing the mathematics calculation with confidence. That shows they were ready,” Prof Magoha said.

IRREGULARITIES
Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i also praised teachers for good work.

“I thank the teachers and parents who, in one way or another, prepared the candidates until they were ready to sit the examinations,” the CS said.

He said the government will work towards improving the welfare of teachers so that they can focus on teaching.

Dr Matiang’i said last year, the Ministry exposed a scandal in some private schools that operated multiple examination centres with an aim of engaging in unethical practices meant to enable them to record favourable ranking in national examinations.