As the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination entered day four on Wednesday, November 6, two students from a high school in Ruiru were nabbed with mobile phones in an exam room.
Ruiru DCIO Jeremiah Ndumbai revealed that officers were undertaking surveillance when the exams were being distributed to the center when they were informed that exam rules were being breached in one of the schools in the area.
The officers were informed that a student at the school in Kiambu County had a mobile device. That was when they went to the school and undertook a thorough investigation and found another student with a mobile phone.
This comes despite the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) directing all mobile phones to be deposited at the head of each examination center and kept under lock and key. This order is aimed at stopping the leaking of the examinations.
The phones were immediately confiscated for further investigation. The DCIO, however, clarified that the exam was not leaked as the students had not yet accessed the contents of the phones, which they were currently investigating.
"The exam was not leaked, the student also did not access the content of the phone which we are now analyzing. However, this is an exam breach which we are investigating," DCIO Ndumbai revealed.
The issue has been forwarded to the Director of Criminal Investigations (DCI) for further probe.
The DCIO has advised students to stop trying to engage in exam malpractice but instead, focus on the exams and follow the rules. "Don't spoil your life trying to steal the exams, use your head," the DCIO told the students who were taking their Chemistry paper.
Meanwhile, Ruiru Deputy County Commissioner Julius Too, who led the monitoring team, stated that KNEC would take further action against the students linked to exam irregularities.
In Homa Bay County, ten teachers who were caught making copies of the KCSE papers on Tuesday were presented before a magistrate Christine Auka.
The teachers were released on a ksh1 million each cash bail. Their case will be heard on November 20.
The Teachers Service Commission has maintained that it will take action against any teachers who are found practicing exam malpractice.
These cases comes at a time when the Cabinet Secretary of Education Julius Ogamba reiterated that the government had put in place several measures to ensure that examination malpractice does not reoccur in this year’s nationwide examinations.
“The Government has taken steps to curb any attempts at malpractices and irregularities through various innovative approaches. These include personalization of the examination papers and securing all mobile phones in an examination centre while an examination is ongoing,” CS Ogamba stated on Monday, November 4.
