KCSE 2018: 3,427 candidates' results cancelled over irregularities - Magoha

Knec has cancelled the results of 3,427 candidates over exam irregularities, chairman George Magoha has said.

Addressing the media during the release of Knec investigations on Tuesday, Magoha said the students are are free to register for the 2019 exam instead of having to wait for three years as provided for in law.

"The council has made a painful but a good decision and that is to cancel the results of the candidates. These candidates should be encouraged to register for this year's exam. The deadline is February 15," he said.

The chairman noted that the affected candidates were from 4,300 examination centers.

"These centres were bold enough to try and cause irregularities.. during the process we caught some of them and dealt with them accordingly," he said.

"If you are not caught during the process you are caught during marking."

Magoha said the candidates are from 44 centers across the country, adding that the malpractice occurred due to negligence of some officials.

"During the investigation, we found out that the malpractice took place due to negligence of adults like centre managers, invigilators, teachers' service personnel on the ground among others," he said.

He said 1,275 candidates and nine centers from the 15 affected counties were cleared.

"This was after thorough investigation without fear or favour... therefore their results will be released," he said.

Magoha said the council invited the affected schools on January 14 to explain the reason for cancellation.

WARNING

He sent a strong warning to all examination candidates, schools and the general public that the council will not condone any form of examination malpractice.

"As you are aware, there were attempts by some individuals to gain prior access to question papers during the 2018 KCSE examination but all these efforts were detected and stopped," he said.

"The Council will do everything in its powers to protect the sanctity of national examinations at all times."

Magoha commended the 99.9 per cent of the centres that conducted themselves strictly within the required regulations leading to the most credible examination process in recent history.

"We will continue tightening the noose on all examinations offenders, including introducing more stringent measures in the management of the 2019 national examinations based on the lessons learnt," he added.

Last year, Magoha asked Education CS Amina Mohamed to unsympathetically deal with candidates who were caught cheating in the KCSE exams, saying choices must have consequences.

The results of 100 candidates were cancelled over cheating. Several others were withheld on suspicion of cheating.

Read: KCSE- Results of 100 candidates cancelled

In total, 660,204 candidates sat this year’s exam - 338,628 male (51.29%) and 321,576 female (48.71%). They include 1,499 special needs candidates.

The exams were sat across 10,078 exam centres. 18 counties had more female than male candidates compared to 17 last year.

Knec contracted 82,059 field officers in the supervision and invigilation of the exam touted as the strictest in Kenya’s history.

They include 450 commissioners and assistant county commissioners, 900 education officers, 9,878 centre managers, 10,183 supervisors, 36,622 invigilators

Some 21,556 security personnel were deployed to man the exams – 1,800 were sent to man security facilities while 19,756 were sent to man examination centres.

Some 2,470 drivers were used during the whole examination exercise.