The Kenya National Examinations body has canceled the registration of hundreds of thousands of candidates as it investigates possible collusion in use of fake birth certificates.
Local reports established that parents and head teachers in schools countrywide might have colluded to use false birth papers to register candidates for this year’s Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) and Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations.
The Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) has declared that the affected candidates will not be allowed to sit the examinations later this year unless proper records are supplied and those behind the fraud punished.
KNEC data shows that 1.78 million candidates were registered to sit the 2019 examinations, whose registration deadline was February 15. Of these, 1,089,671 were KCPE candidates while 698,935 students registered for KCSE, from all the 10,304 centers.
Verification of Registration Data pic.twitter.com/Ks08s5VoZh
— KNEC (@ExamsCouncil) February 18, 2019
Data showed that the majority of malpractices occurred in primary schools. Knec subsequently canceled the registration of 342,916 KCPE candidates and 28,713 in secondary schools.
This shows how corruption is rife at the registrar of persons and immigration office, these students and pupils are very innocent, the gvt should investigate and fire those behind the fake certificates issuance. Kenyans love quick things and are as corrupt like their leaders
— James Jimmy (@Jillix4) March 4, 2019
This means that only 746,755 candidates have validly been registered to sit the KCPE examinations while only 670,222 candidates can sit the KCSE tests.