Don’t try to influence marking of KCSE exam, Magoha warns
Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha yesterday warned against any attempts to interfere with the marking of the just-concluded Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) exam.
Speaking at Kenya High School where he witnessed the sealing of final exam papers, Magoha said marking of the papers will start immediately and warned anyone who has intentions of influencing the process that they will not succeed.
“We have officers and a multi-agency team on alert,” said the CS, adding that the results will be out before Christmas.
The CS revealed that 21 examination centres reported cases of attempted malpractices in the examination that came to a close yesterday.
He, however, gave the tests a clean bill of health, saying no cases of leakage were reported.
But Magoha said there were attempts of early leakage of some papers in parts of the country including Nairobi, Migori, Homa Bay, Wajir, Garissa and Kisii counties.
He disclosed that 90 mobile phones suspected to have been sneaked into exam rooms to aid cheating, were confiscated.
The CS said 35 of the phones were confiscated in Eastleigh’s St Theresa’s Boys in one exam room.
He also revealed that 300 schools had been placed on the radar following reports of plots of intentions to cheat.
“We have something to be proud of because of the level of success. This tells us that the process was well done...we had problems in 21 exam centres two serious ones in Kisii where there were cases of impersonation,” the CS said.
Magoha said the Kisii cases involved would-be impersonators producing a fake photo album and in another case, some police officers were accused of taking a Sh2,000 bribe every day to facilitate cheating.
The CS said he will recommend the promotion of two police officers who busted an impersonation attempt and an Assistant Chief in Eastleigh who helped detect hidden mobile phones.
He defended the deployment of a large number of police officers to guard exam centres, but pledged the numbers would be reduced when cheating cases become insignificant.
Teachers Service Commission chief executive Nancy Macharia commended teachers for what she said was a job well done.
“To say we had over 10,000 examination centres and in only 21 did we get a few problems, most of which had nothing to do with exams but administrative, was a significant achievement,” she said. Some 699,745 candidates sat the examination this year.
