The Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations kicked off smoothly in all the 346 examination centers within Homa Bay County.
The County has a total of 21,583 candidates who are sitting for their KCSE exams out of this 11,753 are Boys and 9,830 Girls respectively.
The County Security team led by the County Commissioner (CC), Harman Shambi, the County Director of Education (CDE), Fredrick Kiiru and the County Teachers Service Commission (TSC) Director, Grace Amira earlier Monday morning witnessed KCSE launch at Rangwe Sub County before moving to other regions to witness the exam progress.
In Suba South constituency a section of roads have been destroyed due to the heavy downpour, Shambi however assured the parents that they have put in place measures that
would ensure no delay during the exercise.
Shambi added that they have set a side police land rover vehicles that would transport exam papers in schools along Sindo-Nyabera road and Nyabera –Nyadendi road which have been destroyed by the ongoing rains and cannot be used by school buses.
Speaking to KNA, the CDE said that the distributions of exam papers in all the centers went smoothly and there were no hitches in the exercise.
However, one candidate at Father Tilen Mixed Secondary school in Rusinga ward of Suba North Sub County failed to show up for the exams after disappearing from home last month.
According to her mother, Pamella On’guru, her daughter, disappeared from home on October 10, and her efforts to trace her have not borne any fruits so far.
Meanwhile, the Turkana County Director of Education, Peter Magiri, assured that security had been beefed up, adding that the exams started as scheduled commending on the presence of containers near exam centers that helped ease their distribution.
“Two candidates writing their KCSE at GK Lodwar prison are among 5,625 candidates sitting this year’s exam,” said Magiri.
There are 3,655 boys and 1,970 girls sitting this year’s exam in 59 exam centers in the county.
191 candidates are writing the exam as private candidates among them 109 boys and 82 girls.
“Unlike the KCPE exam where we witnessed hitches because of floods this time we started without challenges. By 6am we had started to open containers and by 7am the exams had reached the schools,” said Magiri.
The Kericho CC, Moses Mbaruku said that the examination had started off smoothly with all 231 examination centres receiving the examination materials on time.
17,470 form four candidates are sitting for the KCSE examinations in Kericho, 8,716 are girls.
At the same time, the Chief Administrative Secretary (CAS) in the Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government, Patrick Ole Ntutu, said at Ole Tipis Girls High School in Narok town warned the parents and teachers against involving themselves in any activity that might cause their children to miss their results or jeopardize the lives of their children.
“This is a very important exercise because we all know that the lives of our children depend on this exam so we don’t expect you to do anything else other than the job that you have been mandated to do,” he said.
The CAS also called upon the teachers and security agencies involved in the KCSE examination to be vigilant during the examination period, asking them to ensure the exams are well supervised and maintain vigilance so that everything goes as planned without hitches.
He further congratulated the team involved in the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) which ended last week especially in the county for the smooth running of the exam with no major incident being reported.
The Narok CC, Samuel Kimiti said they don’t expect any problems to arise during the KCSE exam process with security being beefed up in the 153 examination centers in the county.
He advised the centre managers and teachers to ensure they follow the examinations rules for the smooth running of the exercise, adding that they have been well trained and briefed with security being put in place to ensure exams go on smoothly.
By KNA Team