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The Kenya National Examinations Council (Knec) has absolved itself from the anomalies that occurred with transmission of 2023 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) exam results.

Knec Chief Executive David Njengere yesterday said the misalignments were caused by configuration issues on the interface used to access results data from the database of the service provider by mobile network operators.

According to Njengere, Knec exported results data in Microsoft Excel format and handed it over to the SMS provider at the start of the release ceremony for security purposes to ensure no one gets access to the results before they were released.

“Knec verified the query and noted that the challenge was only affecting results accessed through the SMS services,” Njengere explained.

Missing grades

He said the SMS service provider identified the issues of results data truncation and encoding that affected accurate and complete representation of the characters in the SMS text and the issues were rectified.

“No person was charged for SMSs sent before the results could be accessed and only received an SMS informing them of the delay.

“Some grades were missing the quality grades signs of plus (+) and minus (-) as expected. For instance, some candidates would receive an SMS of a mark of 73B+ while others with the same score indicated 73B, while some had 75A instead of the correct grade is 75A-. The results for Kiswahili paper for some candidates were presented at the position for Kenyan Sign Language,” he said.

He said Knec has a procedure for resolution of results queries as guided by the Legal Notice No. 131 of the Knec (Marking of Examinations, Release of Results and Certification) Rules of 2015, Rule 27 on review of examination results that is to be lodged within 30 days of the release of results.

“The review of the queries involves the verification of the score in the database and the candidate’s answer script,” he said.

He was speaking when National Assembly Committee on Education toured Knec warehouse in Nairobi, where a demonstration on Optical Mark Recognition machines in marking exam scripts was made.

Education Principal Secretary Belio Kipsang also said the SMS platform is not the only option that parents can use to check exam results.

Kipsang explained that results are also posted on the school portal, which is not only accessible but also free for all.