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| Education Cabinet Secretary Jacob Kaimenyi during a Parliamentary departmental committee meeting on Education at County Hall, Nairobi, on October 28, 2014 |
The case is one in a series of cheating incidents which could dent the reputation of national exams.
Mr
Gildon Shioso Opati of Babs Ridge Academy in Mariakani in Mombasa was
charged with being in possession of English Paper Three, Maths Paper Two
and a Kiswahili Paper — all part of tests the students were yet to
write.
In Mumias, the Daily Nation established
that some candidates had access to test questions hours before sitting
the Kenya Certificate of Secondary examinations.
Test
questions appear to have been re-typed and circulated through SMS and
the popular mobile chat application, WhatsApp, with each paper being
sold for between Sh1,500 and Sh3,500.
The Nation confirmed that the test questions circulated on mobile were the actual ones later written in the exam rooms.
The Kenya National Examinations Council (Knec), however, said the purported exam papers in circulation were “fake”.
Mr
Opati was arrested on Monday and charged alongside three university
students with KCSE exam papers to candidates in the county. They denied
the charges.
The students are from the Technical University of Mombasa.
Among those charged was Mr Sadiki Juma Sheti from the university who, along with the principal, were released on bond.
UNFAIR ADVANTAGE
In Mumias County, the Nation obtained questions from a senior teacher three hours before English Paper Three was written.
The
paper in question was meant to be written at 11.30am although the
questions were circulating through WhatsApp and SMS by 8am.
The
teacher, who cannot be named because of the nature of the
investigation, had intercepted communication between colleagues from
Muslim Girls, Mumias and Buchifi Secondary School.
The questions turned out to be the exact ones that candidates tackled in the exam room.
Getting
the questions gives candidates an unfair advantage over their
colleagues in the exam because it gives them a chance to get answers
beforehand.
In another incident, three Form Four
candidates from Uriri Boys High School in Migori County were arrested
after they were reportedly found cheating during the Biology exam.
The three were picked by the police officers who were called in by examination officials.
They were found with a revision book and marking scheme for the exams.
“The
marking scheme bore the exact answers to questions in the Biology paper
and we are still conducting investigations to establish how many
students were involved,” said Mr Jacob Kaberia, the Uriri police boss.
So far, there have been several arrests made by the exams council’s security officials.
A
21-year-old Kenyatta University student in Manga, Nyamira County, was
caught with “exam” papers loaded onto a flash disk and another arrest
was made in Oyugis, Homa Bay County.
CHEATING HOTSPOTS
Knec’s
acting secretary, Dr Joseph Kivilu, had named Garissa, Kisii, Oyugis,
Nyamira, Rongo and Eastleigh in Nairobi as cheating hotspots when the
exams started more than a week ago.
Education Cabinet
Secretary Jacob Kaimenyi on Tuesday proposed the return of the
three-year ban from sitting exams for candidates found cheating.
The rule was relaxed in favour of cancellation of the results.
“Parents
should get this well; those children found cheating will be barred from
sitting the examination for three years. It is a new development and I
think it is a good one, to curb irregularities in the exam,” Prof
Kaimenyi told the Education committee in Parliament.
Additional reporting by Elisha Otieno
Source: Daily Nation
Source: Daily Nation
