Speaking to journalists in a press conference, the Kenya National Examination council chair George Magoha has revealed that 3,427 candidates’s results were cancelled after being involved in exam irregularities in the 2018 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE).
According to Magoha, investigations revealed that there was glaring collusion for some of the affected candidates.
In some cases KNEC unearthed identical calculation errors and identical wordings with unusual vocabularies in the students’ answer sheets.
Magoha also revealed that in some cases, they discovered that some students wrote correct answers, even when their working was incorrect.
Magoha also listed the 15 counties which were affected by examination irregularities. They include Machakos, Meru, Isiolo, Turkana, West Pokot, Kericho, Narok and Elgeyo Marakwet.
Bungoma, Kisii, Homabay, Mandera, Kisumu, Migori and Garissa Counties also featured in the list.
The KNEC boss highly condemned individuals who were luring children to engage in such malpractices.
“Leave the children alone. No matter how poor you are, the children are intelligent kids,” Magoha urged.
He also confirmed that out of the centres which had their examinations withheld during the 2018 KCSE results release, KNEC had cleared a total of 1,275 candidates.
He urged the students whose results were cancelled to register for the 2019 national examinations.
“However, in order to tamper justice with mercy, the council decided that these candidates should be encouraged to register for these year’s exams before close of registration on February 15.”
There was relief however for 1,275 KCSE candidates from nine centers who had been suspected of exam malpractice but were cleared by the council “after thorough due diligence.”