Parents disgruntled by their children's performance in the just released Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) staged protests outside Kenya National Examinations Council's Office (KNEC).
The parents from a school in Kitengela stormed the examinations body's offices in Nairobi arguing that the results awarded to their children were inaccurate.
While staging the protest, the parents questioned why the school which typically performs well recorded an abysmal performance in the national examinations.
"To me as a parent representing my peers, I believe that this is a sincere injustice to the children of Kitengela International as indicated here and also to the children of other schools in this nation,” one of the parents lamented.
The protesting parents piled additional pressure on the examiners who were already petitioned by the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) to take responsibility for the errors recorded in the national examinations.
Specifically, the KNUT Kisumu Branch Secretary David Obuon wanted KNEC CEO David Njengere to respond to the various issues raised by parents.
“When results were released, there was a 3-hour delay in the SMS access of results. Are parents going to be refunded for the money used yet the results were not delivered? Who will refund them?” He questioned.
On Friday, KNEC admitted that it had spotted errors in the dissemination of the results after some schools and candidates raised the concerns.
Soon after, the government agency committed to addressing the anomalies and commissioned a meeting slated for Sunday. KNEC then asked aggrieved parents to lodge complaints with the examinations body.
Some students indicated missing marks for some subjects, while others received results for exams they never sat.
A day later, KNEC indicated that it had begun addressing some of the concerns raised by the parents clarifying that the issues had affected only SMS results due to configuration issues.
The council further indicated that only 133 candidates were affected by having low marks in some of the subjects, including English and Kiswahili.
"These cases have all been addressed and results for the affected candidates updated appropriately."
Education CS Ezekiel Machogu released the results on Thursday, November 23, with the top candidate scoring 428 marks.
Over 1.4 million students sat for the national examinations that began on November 30.
