KNEC Reveals Error that Made Some 2023 KCSE Candidates Get Higher Grades

by Timothy Cerullo on Wednesday, 10 April 2024 - 10:05 am

Candidates from St Anne's Girls High School, Lioki, in Kiambu County sit for KCSE papers on November 6, 2023.

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KNEC

The Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) on Tuesday, April 9, admitted a mistake in the printing of the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE).

According to KNEC, the system glitch led to the omission of minus signs (-) for some grades. This meant that some students' grades were printed as, for example, a D (plain) instead of a D- (minus).

This was revealed after Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu and KNEC Chief Executive Officer David Njengere were grilled by the National Assembly Education Committee to answer questions regarding grade discrepancies in the 2023 KCSE exams.

During the grilling session, the committee was informed that 3,018 candidates across 1,059 examination centres nationwide were affected by this error.

KNEC CEO David Njengere during the announcement of the 2022 KCPE Exam at Mtihani House on Wednesday, December 21, 2022.

KNEC

However, in its defence, KNEC stated that the online portal reflected the accurate results and that discrepancies were solely in the printed nominal rolls distributed to schools.

KNEC further noted that it had since delivered corrected printouts to affected schools. MPs raised concerns about the trauma the affected students experienced and the confusion in the errors.

CS Ezekiel Machogu, further clarified that the Ministry of Education had taken steps to prevent similar occurrences in the future.

"A technical team was constituted, with representation from the Ministry of ICT and the Digital Economy, the National Computer and Cybercrimes Coordination Unit and the ICT Authority," Machogu stated.

"By a letter dated March 4, 2024, the team submitted its report to the Ministry of Education", he added.

A recommendation was made for the establishment of a multi-sectoral ICT committee to oversee the examination process from marking to result release and implementing regular load tests to assess system capacity.

KNEC was further obligated to upgrade its IT infrastructure and implement continuous performance monitoring to proactively identify potential shortcomings.

On January 8, CS Ezekiel Machogu announced the release of the 2023 KCSE examination results. However, concerns were raised about the authenticity of the results after parents detected glaring anomalies.

This is after several schools got different results after logging into the KNEC official portal. From the results shared, the grades of different subjects had changed prompting alarm.