The marking of the 2021 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) will start today. Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha stated that KCSE grading will be done according to tight and meticulous procedures to maintain exam integrity.
CS Magoha notes that the exercise will take place in 35 locations and will take two weeks to complete, allowing candidates to transfer to colleges and vocational institutes.
According to University Education and Research Principal Secretary Simon Nabukwesi, KCSE candidates will begin enrolling in institutions as early as June, this year.
Entry into vocational institutions, according to Nabukwesi, will commence in September. “The Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) will start placing the candidates in the institutions immediately after the KCSE results are released.
There will be no waste of time as candidates will be picked to join universities in early June,” said Nabukwesi when he inspected exam distribution in Nakuru.
According to the Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC), a total 831,015 candidates registered in 10,413 centres for the KCSE exam in 2021.
Exam malpractice was recorded in numerous locations of the country during the administration of the written exam.
“There was a tendency to use mobile phones to take photographs of exam questions before sneaking them out of exam centres to wait, hired people who would tackle the questions and attempt to smuggle the answers back to the candidates,” Magoha explained.
The CS, on the other hand, said that no exam papers were leaked and that the attempts to facilitate cheating were limited to certain examination officials photographing question papers after retrieving them from the containers.
Magoha also allayed secondary school administrators’ fears over a rumoured conspiracy by KNEC officials to ‘raise’ candidates’ grades after they were marked.