The Education Cabinet Secretary (CS), Prof. George Magoha on Monday stated that this year’s national exams will be free from any form of cheating from exam delivery, exam process and marking.
Prof. Magoha, while speaking during a briefing on the 2019 exam preparedness, urged all key stakeholders to work together and ensure that the exams will be managed better.
He added the Ministry has been on an effective and sustained campaign to enhance the credibility of national examinations in Kenya through the adoption of measures aimed at curbing irregularities.
“I wish to assure the country that the script of managing the examinations this year will contain a few enhanced measures aimed at sealing off minor loopholes that criminals attempted to use last year as they tried to introduce cheating mainly at the KCSE examination,” he said.
He added that the Ministry is putting measures such as increasing the number of examinations containers from last year’s 459 to 479 to shorten distance and reduce possible cheating on the way.
“This will help us to shorten distances in select regions where moving examination materials to long distances exposed the materials to the corrupt individuals,” he emphasized.
Prof. Magoha also urged teachers to cover the syllabus fully and slowly to ensure students and pupils understand rather than rushing the syllabus to create time for revision.
“The Ministry wishes to advise teachers and candidates to adequately revise for the 2019 examinations by effectively covering the syllabus and conducting thorough revision,” Magoha said.
The education boss added that they have rolled out a robust pre-monitoring exercise to sensitize all schools in the country against cheating in national examinations.
“This exercise follows reports that some schools intend to use all means to cheat in the examinations, including through early exposure of question papers and collusion among candidates and teachers,” he said.
The Ministry, according to Magoha, will map out the trouble spot areas, including structures and buildings within and around schools that will be put under inspection before and during the examinations.
Speaking during the briefing, Education Principal Secretary, Belio Kipsang urged parents to be more involved with the activities of their children in schools especially during selection of schools by the KCPE and Universities for KCSE students.
He added that registration and selection of schools will be online to ensure that every citizen across the country gets access and to reduce congestion in schools during these registrations.
By Gloria Chebet/Melodious Kemunto/Joseph Ng’ang’a
