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A major showdown looms today at a meeting between the Kenya National Examinations Council (Knec) and Ministry of Education officials over a proposal to seal examination leakages.

At the heart of the controversy is the proposal by Knec that head teachers and examiners would be required to pick examination materials from collection centres in batches as per subject.

For instance, in a day that students or pupils sit for three papers, those responsible would be required to turn up at the collection centres three times, picking one particular examination paper at a time.

This morning, Knec has convened a meeting with all County Education Directors and officials of the Kenya Secondary Schools Head Teachers Association (KSSHA) and Kenya Primary Schools Head Teachers Association (KPSHA) in Nairobi over the issue.

Teachers and educationists are vehemently opposed to the proposal, which they say is not only time consuming but also hard to implement due to logistics.

At least four County Directors of Education yesterday told People Daily that they would oppose the proposal that they say has many logistical challenges.

Questions abound how teachers in remote and far flung areas with impassable roads would manage to collect papers from the centres, which in most cases are situated more than 100 kilometres away.

Presently, head teachers and invigilators collect the day’s papers at once and store them in respective schools and return the scripts at the end of the day after the students or pupils have undertaken the exams.

A total of 346 strong double-lock metal containers – whose keys are only with education officials – are usually distributed across all the sub-county offices and county commissioners tasked to ensure 24-hour security.

Head teachers normally collect exam papers at 5am every day from these containers, which must be opened jointly by the sub-county education officials and an examinations official in the presence of a police officer.

Education officer

The head teacher and sub-county education officer sign against accountability documents confirming both the container and exam papers have not been tampered with, and then be escorted by a senior police officer to the exam centres.

Previously, exam papers were kept in Knec offices in Nairobi and then dispatched to police armories across the country, sometimes up to four days earlier, an arrangement that facilitated leaks.

But under the proposed format, the invigilators would have to pick each paper differently and return the scrips immediately the students or pupils are done with it. Knec believes that storing the papers and worked on scripts in schools has been one way through which examination cheating has been abetted.

“Imagine the amount of resources this is going to consume. They want us to make several trips to the collection centres several times in day, picking one paper at a time. They better devise another system but not this one,” a  County Director of Education told People Daily.

Knec says they want to protect the distribution system after introducing enhanced security features to protect individual papers that include tamper-proof packaging and watermark barcodes on the papers to deter copying.

Each page of the question papers to be used by candidates will have specific watermark barcodes that will help in investigations and identification of any copying.

Shrink-wrapping will also be introduced on all examination cartons to discourage breakage.

Knec also intends to review how set questions were transmitted to the printer abroad to ensure unnecessary contact with the questions was limited.

Council has in the recent days been under scrutiny with Members of Parliament claiming that investigations established that some of its officials facilitated exam cheating during the 2022 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE).

Education Committee Chairman Julius Melly claimed that findings showed that Knec officials shared copies of the examination papers in exchange for money. 

MPs raised concerns over the sudden shift in the performance of some schools that registered high grades and overall mean scores in the 2022 exams.

According to the lawmakers, an analysis of the past performances registered in the schools under scrutiny showed massive deviation, hence, raising the question of the impact made within the short period. 

“There was cheating in the exam of 2022. And the members of the public have put it very clear that most of the cheating originated from the council itself,” Melly stated. 

But Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu has come to the defence of Knec, insisting that the 2022 KCSE exam was done on a clean slate.