Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha has asked the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) to punish a primary school deputy headteacher in Kitui County responsible for a Kenya Certificate of Primary Education Candidate missing an exam.
Magoha expressed his disappointment in the action that saw the pupil miss a paper after he was ejected out of the room.
“I want to inform the nation that there was a very unfortunate incident in Kitui where a child was taken out of the examination room and sent home. We hope that the teacher who had the audacity to cause this child to miss English Composition paper will be severely disciplined by the Teachers Service Commission," he stated.
Speaking in Kisumu on Thursday, April 8, Magoha assured that the ministry would follow up and that the pupil would be graded based on the papers he sat.
"You recall that His Excellency the President has directed that any child who presents himself or herself to the examination center must be allowed to take the examination. All other things can be discussed later," he added
The pupil who goes to Kaunguni Primary School in Waita, Mwingi central was pulled out of the examination room over an uncleared fee of ksh400 for the school feeding program.
The fee caters for a meal of githeri for the three days set for the national examinations.
The deputy headteacher asked the pupil who lives with his grandmother seven kilometers away from the school to go fetch the money over lunch break along with two others.
He had already sat the mathematics and English papers and was meant to sit a composition paper that afternoon. Unfortunately, when he made it back to the school, the paper had ended.
1,066,986 candidates sat for KCPE examinations that ran from March 22 to March 24, 2021. Earlier this week, Magoha said examination results will be released in two weeks. He further added that the marking of multiple choice papers was complete with English Composition and Kiswahili Insha papers still in progress.
“We had a schedule and in the next two weeks, the results will be out,” he stated. he urged all principals to allow those candidates who have fee arrears to sit for the KCSE exams.
The CS also pointed out the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic as some examiners were unable to show up for marking due to the Covid-19 restrictions within Nairobi and four other counties (Kiambu, Machakos, Kajiado and Nakuru) which have collectively been labeled as a disease infected zone.
Magoha, however, noted that this did not interfere with the national examinations schedule.
