Rogue teachers are asking parents to pay as much as Sh10,000 to abet cheating in this year’s national school tests, Kenya National Examinations Council chairman George Magoha has revealed. But the promise is fake, warned Prof Magoha yesterday during a briefing on preparations for this year’s primary and secondary school national exams, indicating that those who have already paid have been conned. The shocking detail of parents and teachers colluding to buy exam material was also confirmed by Education Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed.
LEAKAGE CARTELS
“Children cannot go out to buy examination materials,” she pointed out. “It’s the teachers and parents who are facilitating this practice, but we want to assure that the examination will be credible and no one will have access to the real materials before the right time.”
To beat the leakage cartels at their own game, the Ministry of Education announced new radical measures that will punish students, their teachers and schools should any impropriety be confirmed. Education Principal Secretary Belio Kipsang said the answer scripts of candidates who will cheat in whichever way will not marked, the school where this happens will be deregistered, and the offending teachers and other officials arrested for prosecution.
The examination centres will also be under 24-hour security surveillance and boarder students will not be allowed use mobile phones for whatever purpose during the exam season. Last year, the results of 1,205 candidates in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations were cancelled as a result of mobile phone-related offences. Ms Mohamed announced that all examination centres will be secured using both the visible presence of uniformed policemen and the invisible eye of State surveillance apparatus.
“This will continue from the beginning to the end of the examination period,” said the Cabinet Secretary. “Examinations will follow a defined path, from the Kenya National Examinations Council premises to the candidate, of course through the container that we are all familiar with.” Any supervisor, invigilator or security personnel who will attempt to compromise the integrity of the tests will be arrested immediately and charged in a court of law, warned Ms Mohamed.
CREDIBLE EXAMS
Teachers Service Commission Chief Executive Officer Nancy Macharia, in a speech read on her behalf by acting Director of Staffing Rita Wahome, said the commission will ensure that teachers do not abet the stealing of the exam. “Centre managers and supervisors are our employees, and we expect them to do what is expected of them,” said Ms Macharia. Knec acting CEO Mercy Karogo said the council is ready to deliver credible exams, while Ms Mohamed lauded the efforts over the last two years to clean up the cheating mess that had become the hallmark of Kenya’s national exams.
“National examinations are now more credible than they have ever been and stand as a reliable measure of the level of achievement of individual candidates,” said the CS, who also warned that “we must not forget the lesson behind the study of change management — not all change lasts”. “It is for this reason that we have ensured that sustainability is at the heart of our reforms,” she promised. A total of 1.7 million candidates will sit the examinations this year, 1,060,787 of them for Kenya Certificate of Primary Education and the remaining 663,811 for Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education. The tests will be administered in 10,075 centres across the country.