The Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination kicks off on Monday with 664,585 candidates expected to take the test. As was the case with the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examination, which ended on Thursday, this year’s Form Four test will be tightly monitored by the Kenya National Examinations Council (Knec) and security agencies to ward off malpractices.
The government is expected to deploy its machinery to seal loopholes in the examinations, including stamping out collusion which led to the cancellation of results for 1,205 candidates last year.
President Uhuru Kenyatta has already indicated that all government agencies will be out to ensure that the examination goes on well. More than 1,000 special monitors drawn from various ministries and government departments have been lined up for the examination.
UNDER SCRUTINY
Although examination monitoring will cover the whole country, some 222 schools have been put under heavy scrutiny due to links to previous examination malpractices.
After last week’s incident in Narok County where the KCPE Science and Kiswahili papers disappeared, forcing the field officers to photocopy the materials, the Kenya National Examination Council has warned that it has enhanced security to safeguard the integrity of the tests.
However, the major concern is failure by most candidates to answer questions requiring elaborative responses which the Ministry of Education says are inadequately tackled. Education Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed is expected to lead the monitoring team across the country in an exercise that ends on November 28.
MATHS PAPER
Centre managers, who are also school head teachers, have also been warned against allowing any examination official to walk into examination rooms with mobile phones.
On Monday, the candidates will start with the mathematics paper while chemistry will be done in the afternoon. According to Knec, some 664,585 candidates will write their examination in 10,077 centres across the country with 83,711 field officers being involved.
During the examination, there will be 10,078 centre managers, supervisors will be 10,460, invigilators (37,978) security personnel (20,156) while drivers will be 5,039 and their total dues will be Sh705 million. Ms Mohamed has ordered that examination containers — currently 459 — be opened daily at 6 am.
MOBILE PHONES
The council will also be keen to deal with candidates who want to use mobile phones to cheat. The over 600,000 candidates sitting this year’s KCSE examination will be battling for the limited elite courses in top universities in the country.
The candidates will be eyeing close to 100,000 slots in 70 public and private universities in the country while those who will not make the cut are likely to join technical colleges.
Candidates will be keen to post good results at the end of next month in order to be assured of slots at the University of Nairobi, Moi, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology and Kenyatta University which are among the most sought after institutions by students. Statistics from the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) indicate that those institutions admit the highest number of students.
COMPUTER SCIENCE
Most of them offer elite courses preferred by most students among them engineering, pharmacy, law, computer science and architecture. Out of some 606,394 candidates who sat last year’s KCSE examination, only 69,151 scored a mean grade of C+ and above, the minimum required to join university.
Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) Secretary-General Wilson Sossion wants the examinations body to ensure that this time round “there is fair grading” in the national examination. In a statement, Mr Sossion said fair grading will ensure candidates achieve their lifetime ambitions and long cherished dreams of proceeding to higher learning institutions.
“The 140,000 vacancies in public universities this time round ought to be filled by local students,” said Mr Sossion. He also asked Knec to put in place appropriate measures to ensure there is no room for leakages and cheating.
LEAKAGES
A report by the Education ministry states that examiners last year reported that some of the questions that tested candidates’ ability to discuss or explain certain concepts that they had learnt were poorly answered, with many candidates either listing or providing sketchy answers. The ministry is worried by candidates’ over-reliance on sketchy revision books and past papers during their revision which don’t contain detailed explanations.