Marking of the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) exams has now been completed and the results could be released by next week, Education Cabinet Secretary Education Secretary Ezekiel Machogu has said.
Machogu said the last group of KCPE candidates under the 8-4-4 system, which has been in place for the last 38 years and is now being phased out went well, sat for their exams with negligible cases of cheating reported.
“We have done the marking, it is finished and we will release the exams anytime next week,” he said after presiding over the 3rd Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) Kenya international conference on girls’ education in Africa on Tuesday, November 21, 2023.
The CS also said the government seeks to place 1.4 million students who sat the KCPE in respective secondary schools before Christmas to allow parents time to prepare for Form One admissions.
“Most likely we will be able to conduct the Form One admissions before Christmas and the parents can be able to prepare for their children to join Form One at least on the third week of January,” he stated.
“I want to assure you that KCPE went on very well and there were no cases of cheating or malpractices. We only had six cases which does not amount to cheating, it was an attempt out of 1.4 million, there were only six cases,” he added.
At the same time, Machogu said the over 903,000 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) candidates will finish writing their exams on Friday, even as he insisted that the exercise has run smoothly.
He said that the Ministry took measures this year such as increasing the number of distribution centres countrywide, with the centre managers collecting the second session paper in the afternoon.
According to the CS, this measure went a long way in avoiding cases of early exposures that had been experienced in previous years, where there were reports of second papers being interfered with.
“The last statement I made the number of cases we had were 74 and these cases did not necessarily mean that one had the answers, it was an attempt because, in an exam room, you are not supposed to have any piece of paper and the 46 cases we had unauthorized material not necessarily answering questions that are in that exam room,” he explained.
Similarly, up to now, the CS said the number of such cases is not in any given area and despite the weather challenges, helicopters delivered the exams and all has gone well.
He insisted that the exam rules and regulations in place are being followed countrywide and are not targeting any given individual, community, county or school and are uniform for all 10,651 KCSE examination centres.
“Nobody is being targeted, the number of cases we have had up to now of unauthorized materials are 147 and if you compare countrywide with the number of candidates that will give you about 0.001 per cent,” Machogu said.
“We must say what we have is perfection because we are 99.9 per cent perfect. What we are going to give the country is credible exams where integrity has not been compromised in any way,” he said.
He also gave assurance that all was well and that marking of KCSE exams would commence immediately after the last paper on November 24.
The CS urged examiners to turn up in large numbers for the marking and stated that the number of marking centres was also increased.
