Basic Education Principal Secretary (PS) Dr. Belio Kipsang has stated that integrity issues in this year’s exams has been drastically reduced with early exposure which was the biggest challenge having been fully contained.

Dr. Kipsang said the new arrangement put in place where the centre managers pick exams from the containers twice in a day instead of just once as was the case earlier has eliminated early exposure to exams since there is no time for the papers to be opened before students sit for the examination.

“The managers pick the second paper of the day from the containers as they drop the students’ answer scripts of the first paper and in doing this, there is no time to tamper with this second paper of the day as before,” the PS said.

Dr. Kipsang also noted that his ministry has been working together with the security and the Information and Communications (ICT) departments in ensuring malpractices in this year’s exams were at a bare minimum.

To this end, he revealed that the ICT officials have managed to infiltrate and block all online sites that have previously been used to provide early exposure to exams and other malpractices.

“Out of 11,000 centre managers, only seven have been found to be involved in examination malpractices and have accordingly been suspended and investigations are ongoing for the law to take its’ course,” He said.

Some of the suspended centre managers or principals are from High Schools including Nyambaria High School in Nyamira County, Gekomoni Secondary School,  Gekonge High School and Sironga Girls High School, all in Upper Nyanza region.

The suspended school heads were alleged to have aided in incidents of exam malpractice in their schools using mobile-phones.

The PS was speaking at Naivasha Girls’ Secondary School in Naivasha on Friday when inspecting the handling of the ongoing exams by centre managers and other stakeholders in the examination process.

Kipsang announced that they have already started marking the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examination in order to release the exam results in good time to allow parents ample time to prepare to take them to Secondary School in January.

He also observed that measures have been put in place to ensure students in the flood-hit areas of the country sit for  exams with several helicopters having been put on standby to assist in delivering exams to exam centres.

Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dr. David Njeng’ere who had accompanied the PS said since 2016, the biggest challenge they have had with exams is early exposure, especially of the second paper of the day, which has completely been eliminated this year with the new arrangement to have centre mangers to pick exams twice a day.

This year 903,260 candidates are sitting for Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations in the country.  This is an increase from 884,122 candidates who sat for the 2022 KCSE exams.

The exam is being undertaken across 11,000 centres under the supervision of the centre managers. KCSE exams which started on Monday, November 6 are expected to end on November 24.

According to data from the Ministry of Education, the marking of the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) and Kenya Primary School Education Assessment (KIPSEA) has commenced with candidates set to receive their exam results before the Christmas holiday.

There were a total of 1,415,315 KCPE and 1,282,574 KIPSEA candidates who sat for the 2023 exams that began on October 30 and were completed on November 1, 2023.

Over 10, 000 students from various universities and colleges are set to benefit from a free software development training course to widen their knowledge and skills.

The training courtesy of Power Learn Project, a Pan African impact organization aims at building capacity in technology through provision of software development scholarships.

Power Learn Project’s Chief of Growth and Operations Mumbi Ndung’u said the initiative targets to equip the youths with skills required in the local and international market to compete for opportunities globally.

Speaking in Kisumu during the graduation ceremony of the first cohort of 50 youths trained in partnership with Compassion Kenya International, Ndung’u said the training has been designed to benefit youths at grassroots who hitherto could not afford the training.

This, she added, was being executed through partnerships with like-minded organisations to ensure that as many youths as possible benefit.

“This pilot programme with Compassion International Kenya is the first of many that we intend to do at Power Learn Project in line with our mission to make digital skills accessible and affordable,” she said.

Beneficiaries of the programme, she added shall be assisted to upskill and become data scientists, cybersecurity experts and entrepreneurs.

“We know the world is now technologically driven in every aspect. We need to make sure that we empower young people with these skills to enable them to compete globally,” she offered.

The acquired requisite skills and brilliant ideas, she noted, will help them in the next level and we expect to go back to their communities and empower other young people with jobs.

She noted that the new graduates will now be able to immensely contribute to the economic development of the particular areas that they come from.

“Our recruitment is ideally not limited to the educational background in a sense of academic qualification. It is more of what skills they have. They must have basic computer skills regardless of where they are. It happens to be that most people in Africa with these skills are either in the universities, tertiary institutions or in urban centres,” she observed.

The goal, she said, is to make Africa a hub of technology talent adding that the organisation targets to train one million software developers across Africa by the year 2027.

Youths in Kenya and across the continent, she added lack equipment adding that the cost of internet and bundles was a major hindrance in technology development.

Power Line Project, she said, has tried to alleviate these challenges by working with the different partners to offer tangible and lasting solutions.

Agnetta Atieno, a Kisii University Student, said the five months course entailed computer programming, web development and coding using the various languages.

“We have also done professional ethics and I am very happy that we are graduating full of newly-acquired knowledge and various skills to use in the field,” she said.

Hillary Ogutu, a medical engineering student said through the program he has been able to specialize in computer programming.