The National Assembly Committee on Education has revealed that some officials within the Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) facilitated cheating in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) 2022.
According to the committee, officials within KNEC sold exam materials months before the students could sit for them to schools and parents in exchange for money leading to massive cheating last year.
The committee also revealed that some of the teachers who testified before it confirmed that national exams are indeed sold by KNEC officials, a business they described as “very lucrative and where people make millions of money.”
During the 2022 KCSE, there were concerns among parents, teachers, and other stakeholders about massive cheating given the abnormal results that some schools that had never featured on a national map got.
According to the committee, a sudden shift in performance during last year’s exam was abnormal and the findings reveal that those schools cheated in exams by buying exam materials beforehand from rogue KNEC officials.
“There was massive cheating in KCSE 2022. This is a concern that has been raised by parents, teachers, and other players within the sector. And our findings have found out that indeed, there was cheating,” said the Committee in a statement.
It is now not clear what the committee will recommend as a way forward for those schools that engaged in exam cheating. This will also complicate how KUCCPS will award courses because many will end up getting high courses such as medicine when all they qualify for is welding.
During the last KCSE exam, many giant schools like Starehe Boys Center, Alliance High School, Friends School Kamusinga, and Starehe Girls, among others, failed to feature as it is the norm for most of them.
In their place, schools that have never been known before from Kisii and Nyamira took over the nation by providing Grade As like nobody’s business.
