Despite being in a mourning mood, Education CS Amina Mohammed is still focused on delivering clean exams to this years KCSE candidates. She was back on the road this Morning as she made visits to school around the City just to monitor and ensure a smooth progress of the examinations.
The CS Addressed candidates at St. George’s Girls’ Secondary School, Nairobi and State House Girls’ High School on Day 4 of KCSE before the commencement of the English (Creative Composition and Essays based on set texts) examination.
The CS later spoke to the press and revealed that 21 people have been arrested over exam malpractices in separate cases across the country.
“This morning, I wish to announce that some of the masterminds of this early exposure scheme have been arrested following a manhunt staged by a combined team of officers under the Multi-Sectoral Team of government experts of @InteriorKE @ExamsCouncil @TSCKenya ,” said Amina
Fifteen people were arrested as they prepared to answer examination questions from a photocopied paper in Kisii county.
Amina said the suspects had the intention of smuggling responses to candidates at the Munianku secondary school in Kisii.
Amina said TSC CEO Nancy Macharia has ordered disciplinary action against the administration of the school.
Four others were arrested after they were caught in a classroom with fake examination pre-prepared notes in Kakamega county.
Two more others are in the custody of the interior ministry and the examinations council though the CS failed to mention where they were arrested from.
“The two of the greatest masterminds of the ‘early exposure’ ring are now in the custody. The two were hunted down last evening after a long and meticulous investigative process and the case now is before court,” she said.
“Their game-plan was to smuggle all or some of the examination questions, take them to unauthorized persons to the tackle the questions and smuggle the “answers” back into the examination rooms,” the CS said.
She said having sealed all loopholes of exam leakage, a few unscrupulous people have over the last three years devised new criminal tricks of opening examination packages minutes before the beginning of the papers.
“Since the examination started, we have kept true to our promise to deliver free and fair results. All the papers have been delivered to every centre with all the unique security features intact,” Amina said.
The Education CS noted that they had not recorded a single case where an examination has been leaked.
Thursday marks the fourth day of KCSE 2018 where 664,550 candidates across 10,077 centres are sitting for their papers countrywide.
Education CS Amina Mohamed had earlier directed documentation of each process from collection of papers to when they are returned to the safety container at sub-county headquarters.
The documentation will be filed as a report and forwarded to a ministry official stationed at the headquarters at the Kenya National Examinations Council.
Center managers will be required to indicate the number of extra scripts issued during collection of the papers and the time papers are collected.
“This will provide data that can be used to verify any issues of shortage or missing scripts,” Amina’s directive says.