All set for KCPE exam kick-off on Tuesday
This year’s Kenya Certificate of Primary Education exam starts on Tuesday.
Rehearsals will be done this morning in 22,153 centres where the 775,820 candidates will sit the exam.
The number of Standard Eight pupils sitting the exam has been increasing annually, with 754,108 pupils recorded last year.
Out of this year’s number, 1,299 candidates are from Kauda in Southern Sudan.
During the KCPE exam pupils write five papers. They will tackle Maths, English Language and Composition tomorrow followed by Science, Kiswahili Language and Insha on Wednesday.
Kenyan Sign Language and Composition will also be done on the same day, simultaneously with Kiswahili Language and Insha.
On the last day of the exam (Thursday), the pupils will sit Social Studies and Religious Education papers.
Kenya National Examinations Council secretary Paul Wasanga said the exam papers dispatch to the far-flung centres started on Friday.
“Helicopters have been used to airlift the materials in areas currently experiencing heavy rains,” he said, adding that papers to Southern Sudan had already been airlifted.
Mr Wasanga said that fewer cases of irregularities were expected in the KCPE exam, as compared to the Form Four exam.
Earlier during a briefing at start of the exams, Mr Wasanga had identified six regions he said had a likelihood of cheating.
He had spotted some exam centres in Nairobi, Eastern, North Eastern, Rift Valley, Coast and Nyanza with “preparedness to commit irregularities.”
Cheating has been a major challenge in guaranteeing the credibility of national exams. Normally, the council cancels results of the cheats.
In the 2010 exam, the government announced that the vice had declined significantly from 1,711 cases in 2009 to 534.
This had followed a government directive to ban cheats from re-sitting the exam for two years.
The ban was later lifted after intense lobbying.
“I assure all our candidates that measures have been put in place to ensure the exams are not compromised,” Mr Wasanga said.
