Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha has unearthed a plot hatched by unscrupulous teachers engaging in exam malpractices as candidates sit the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations
Speaking in Vihiga County on Tuesday, March 22, Magoha noted that some tutors registered extra students to get extra papers.
The teachers also reportedly smuggle the papers out of the examination rooms, photocopy them and leak them to the students in time before the exams begin.
He noted that the ploy had been used in some schools, prompting the Ministry of Education to investigate the issue.
"We know the tricks. Sometimes the crooked teachers register excess candidates to make it appear like they are missing from the centres," he stated.
CS Magoha, however, affirmed that there existed genuine cases of missing candidates due to several factors such as illnesses.
Alluding to this predicament, he added that the Ministry had liaised with the Ministry of Interior to track the genuine candidates who were missing.
"Together with the Ministry of Interior, we have gone to homes to fish out genuine missing candidates so that they can go back to school and sit the exam," the CS noted.
In the past examinations, cases of missing candidates were attributed to genuine factors such as pregnancies and dropouts.
However, the new scheme has uncovered the depth that some teachers sink to abet cheating.
The Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) recently exposed tricks used by an exam syndicate to access the papers in advance.
DCI noted that some unscrupulous county government officials opened exam containers hours before the scheduled time. University students were also used to provide answers to candidates sitting the exams.
"An elaborate web of fraudsters comprising of school heads, security agents, parents, and college students, in some parts of the country have conspired to give lazy students an unfair advantage over their counterparts who worked hard and prepared for their examinations," Magoha recently stated.
