Kenya National Examinations Council plans for five exams in a year
The national examinations body is working on a tight programme to deliver five national examinations in a year likely to be disrupted by the General Election.
The Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) announced yesterday that it was putting in place modalities to ensure that it delivers the exams, notwithstanding the disruptions expected to be occasioned by the campaigns for the August election.
Education Cabinet Secretary, Prof George Magoha said the duty at hand is to prepare those exams effectively, even as he lauded examiners who have developed the test papers.
“This coming year will test whether the transformation we have done at KNEC is sustainable or not and the reason is instead of having the two usual exams, we will have five and my orders from the President is that I give all my time to focus on delivery of these exams,” said the CS.
He made the remarks at the KNEC offices yesterday when he launched the Council’s 2021-2026 Strategic Plan.
“I want to thank those who have worked with other experts to develop questions, which have now formed the tests for the exams to be done in March and in December,” the CS said.
“We are in a transitional year, nothing stops despite being an election year. The children shall have their examination in December and we want to prepare properly,” he added.
The CS also assured that the December exams will be ready for administration by the end of February.
The five exams are 2021 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) and Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) exams to be written in March while the 2022 KCPE and KCSE and Grade 6 exams are scheduled for December.
“The exams for December will be ready for administration which means it will not matter who takes over as president, we will have delivered what we have to for our children, who are at the centre of all this,” said the CS.
Transformative affair
He said the exam is one of the transformative areas and has been successful.
“We came here six years ago and nobody wanted to be associated with KNEC.
Now there are many people who will come to see how we are doing it. So forget about politics. Our children going to universities are much better,” he said.
He said the Government has been thorough in preparing the exams and much as the issue of credibility and corruption is a bigger problem in the country, KNEC is now one of the strongest brands.
The CS also dismissed reports that the Government will increase examination fees.
“The President ordered that there will be no exam fees for all children for both public and private schools, which means for both poor and rich children.
The government is paying exam for them and that policy will not change,” Magoha said.
KNEC Chief Executive Officer Dr David Njengere said that the Council seeks to re-engineer itself and provide the necessary assessment to ensure the country is on the right trajectory in the education sector and in national development.
“The Strategic Plan we are launching today the focus is on how we will enhance assessment and ensure credible certification,” said Njengere.
Credible examinations
Though the Strategic Plan has covered many issues, he said that the critical ones include helping KNEC consolidate all the gains the country has made in ensuring credible exams since 2016 when reforming the system began.
“We have identified all the things that we have done in these reforms and consolidated them in the Strategic Plan to make sure we do not lose out on any of the things,” said Njengere.
The CEO also said entrenched in the plan is research and innovation to help make sure KNEC does not go back to the old days before 2016.
He said it is through research that KNEC will continuously improve its systems by identifying all the weak areas in its processes, which already underway.
“We have started these processes through Competency Based Assessment (CBA). Each of these assessments have been preceded by pilot studies before national roll out.
So we are sure that what we are offering the country in the name of CBA is something that has been well researched and we are innovating within those assessments, especially to make sure that we do not miss out on any child,” Njengere explained.
