MARKING

Before the exams began, Kenya National Examinations Council (Knec) Chairman George Magoha had announced that, the marking of exams would take approximately three weeks. Dr Magoha had said that Knec would use 20 machines it acquired last year to mark the exams. The optical mark recognition (OMR) machines enable the examiners to scan exam papers with multiple choice answers and can handle up to 10,000 papers daily.

PROGRAMMED

They are programmed with the correct answers and detect the pencil shade on the answer sheets. Since last year, only the English composition and the Kiswahili Insha are marked manually. After marking, the examiners are expected to pass the marked scripts to a new machine for the tallying of marks.

Last year, the machines were said to be 99.9 percent efficient. The 2017 KCPE exam results were released on November 21. According to the Education Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed, there was no exam leakage this year.

But this year saw the highest number of pregnant schoolgirls sitting the KCPE exam across the country. Ms Mohamed has since ordered the quality assurance team in the ministry to investigate the rising teenage pregnancy cases and file a report.