Despite water-tight measures put by the former Education Cabinet Secretary Dr Fred Matiang’i to curb exam cheating, fresh details have emerged on how it happened last year.
A report by the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) indicates that teachers and students colluded and managed to infiltrate the system.
KNEC cancelled results of about 1205 candidates from eight examination centres last year.
In one of the centres where the results were cancelled, one of the invigilators said according to the Standard: “These paragraphs can only have been written from the same source since the order of the words in each scenario is identical (word for word).”
In the 10 schools that had their results cancelled there was massive irregularity reported in English, Chemistry, Physics and Biology papers, further states the report titled, The Report on the Investigations into Examination Irregularities Following the Withholding of Results in 10 Centres in the 2017 KCSE.
Secondary schools affected include: Kibuline secondary school, Chalbi Boys, Barazani Girls, St Cecilia girls Ortum secondary school, Koelel secondary school, Tenges, Chebuyusi boys, Mokubo secondary and Towfiq secondary school.
For Chalbi, Barazani, Tenges, Mokubo and Towfiq secondary schools, examination results were cancelled due to serious examination malpractices reported.
Education Cabinet Secretary Ambassador Amina Mohammed said in all the cheating cases, it was clear there was collusion between students and contracted professionals tasked with administering the exam.
“From the trends of collusion, it was observed that the examination malpractice could not have occurred without willful abetting of the cheating by contracted professionals in charge of administering of the examination,” She said when she appeared before Parliamentary Education Committee this week.
In 8 schools which had their results cancelled, students presented similar and incorrect answers.
The cheating was evident in some cases where students cancelled the right answers and wrote the wrong ones-a pattern indicative that the wrong answers had been smuggled to the examination centres.
The report documented that 64 examination centres engaged in examination malpractice. However, each case was handled professionally as by stipulated procedures by the KNEC Act.
By the time the results were released, the council had solved the malpractices cases in 54 centres leaving out the 10 centres which they said required more time to investigate.
KNEC offered a second chance to those affected by cancellation of results to register for 2018 KCSE by February 28.