National Examination Plans Laid Out by CS Machogu
Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu will meet two other Cabinet Secretaries tomorrow, Monday, 25th September, to deliberate on this year’s National Examinations.
This is after rumors of various strategic changes emerged concerning the administration of the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCSE) and the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE).
The Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) is concluding the implementation of strategies seeking to close and reduce loopholes that could affect the integrity of the National Examinations.
The Cabinet Secretary for Education, Ezekiel Machogu, will meet the Cabinet Secretary for Interior, Kithure Kindiki, and the Cabinet Secretary for ICT, Eliud Owalo, to discuss a multisector approach to exam administration in the country. The meeting will take place on Monday 25th, at the KNEC offices in Nairobi.
During the meeting, the Education CS will provide detailed information on the National Examinations for which 3.5 million students will sit.
Information from the KNEC database reveals that over 1.2 million students will sit for the KPSEA examinations, while another 1.4 million students will sit for the KCPE examinations. On the other hand, close to 903,260 students will sit for their KCSE examinations.
With the introduction of the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC), this will be the last KCPE examination that students will sit for.
According to Dr David Njengere, the KNEC CEO, there are significant changes set to take place in various dimensions of exam administration, including transportation of examination papers, especially those that will take place in the afternoon to prevent unauthorized exposure of examination materials.
Contrary to previous procedures where schools received both morning and afternoon papers simultaneously, schools will now receive each paper separately, considering the scheduled session.
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According to the CEO, these changes will mainly affect KCSE examinations due to the tendency of early exposure witnessed in previous examinations.
The government has made an effort to increase the number of examination storage containers by 82, making the total number of containers to be 576. School remapping has also taken place to make transportation of examination materials from nearest storage containers easier.
Schools had to collect examination material from the subcounty headquarters during previous examinations. However, some schools are closer to sub-county headquarters, different from those in which they are located. As a result, they will pick examination materials from the nearest storage container.
Additionally, the changes will affect the KCSE grading system.
According to recommendations by the Presidential Working Party on Education Reform, KCSE grading will depend on two compulsory subjects that will determine a student’s final score. These two subjects include one language and Mathematics and five other subjects a student deems best. Currently, KCSE grading depends on five compulsory subjects and two other subjects in which students perform best.
National Examination Plans Laid Out by CS Machogu.