The newly released KCSE results have got Kenyans excited over the speed and level of transparency that was recorded in entire process.
While most of the praises have been directed at Education CS Fred Matiang'i, there are many men and women who worked hard to ensure examination results were delivered smoothly.
One such man is Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) Chairman Prof. George Magoha.
The former University of Nairobi Vice Chancellor revealed that when he was appointed to head the KNEC board earlier in the year, he was surprised at the pervasive rot in the system.
According to Magoha, the examinations council had no control systems with a majority of the staff having access to national exams, long before they were sent out to the candidates.
This allowed dubious cartels to take advantage, making billions of shillings from selling examination papers to KCPE and KCSE candidates.
At the time, KNEC would set the exams years in advance and have them stored in a databank that was accessible to a large number of people.
Once the cartels were able to access exams through corrupt staff, they would sell them to a vast network involving parents, teachers, students spread across the school, county, and even at the national levels.
In response to the loophole, the teachers stopped teaching and would instead coach students to answer the leaked questions.
“I went through many scripts randomly and was shocked that many candidates could not answer even common knowledge questions, hence only managed to score four or six per cent. It is not that they are weak, but they had not been taught,” the no-nonsense administrator recalled.
Within a few months, Magoha had introduced a number of reforms that included setting of new papers by a team of newly-vetted examiners.
The staff at KNEC were also forced to undergo a vetting process with some of them having to be laid off after they were found to have been compromised.
