The Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) on Monday cautioned the public against falling prey to the tricks employed by fraudsters claiming they can hack the agency's portal to alter 2023 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) results.
While announcing the results last week, Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu revealed that parents and candidates would for the first time access the results via the portal after the government phased out the SMS channel that Kenyans had relied on for the last two decades.
Consequently, on Monday morning, the examination body shared screenshots purportedly shared by the con artists. The image bore a fake URL of the KNEC website, a trick designed to dupe Kenyans.
In one of the fake posts, a student who had scored a D+ had their grade upgraded to a C+ with a contact shared for any person who is seeking to have their results altered.
“Do not fall prey to fraudsters purporting to be able to change KCSE grades. Don't be conned!” KNEC warned.
This warning comes at a time when several students and parents have raised concerns about dismal results in the 2023 KCSE results after they were released a week ago.
Students from Oruba Boys Secondary School in Migori for instance lodged complaints about their results which showed most of them scored D.
“We sat for the exams as 75 candidates but what we saw was unexpected. It is full of irony. We haven't seen this before,” one of the students, lamented.
Just a day after the release of the KCSE, there were several concerns as well on the alleged inconsistency of the results on the KNEC portal.
For instance, Homabay MP Peter Kaluma shared a screenshot alleging that the results of a student from Nairobi had been altered from a mean grade of B+ to A-.
He also shared another screenshot on his X account which alleged changes in results of a national boys school. The post showed a change in overall chemistry mean grade to A- from B+ that had allegedly been posted on the portal.
A total of 903,260 students sat for the 2023 KCSE exams, an increase from 881,416 candidates who took the exams in 2022.
Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu announced that 1,216 candidates, representing 0.14 per cent, got straight As in 2023 compared to 1,146 in 2022.
Broken down, a total of 7,254 got A- (minus), 18,078 attained B+ (plus), 36,728 got B (plain) and 78,343 got C+ (plus).
