At least 370,000 candidates who had been locked out of this year’s national examinations have one week to submit genuine birth certificates.
The Kenya National Examinations Council (Knec) has announced that it will reopen registration for both the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) and the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examinations between March 7 and March 15.
The national examiner said a number of candidates did not provide genuine birth certificate numbers and warned that registration with fake documents was an examination anomaly.
In a circular dated March 1, Knec directed county and sub-county directors of education to inform principals, head teachers, parents and guardians to seek genuine birth certificates for candidates who had not provided them or those who provided fake ones.
“This must be done urgently,” directed Knec Acting Chief Executive Officer, Dr Mercy Karogo.
“The registration systems for both KCPE and KCSE will be opened for a week from march 7 to March 15 2019 to allow insertion/amendment of birth certificate numbers only,” added the circular.
This information will be counter-checked, to confirm if the submitted documents and changes are valid.
Knec warned that any false information will see candidates barred from sitting the exams.
“At the lapse of this period, the data will be validated with Integrated Persons Registration Services (IPRS) department, and any candidate without or found to have provided a wrong or fake birth certificate number will be deregistered,” warned Knec According to Knec data, 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. Out of these, at least 370,000 candidates were facing de-registration. Data from Knec shows that primary school candidates are the most affected by de-registration with 342,916 cancelled registrations.
There were only 28,713 cancelled registrations in secondary schools. The data further reveals Meru as the county with the highest number of cancelled registrations with 23,806 candidates in primary and 3,646 in secondary. Yesterday, Kenya Secondary School Heads Association (Kessha) chair Kahi Indimuli dismissed the March 15 registration deadline.