KCPE marking at 35% results to be released early says Magoha

Education CS George Magoha has said the marking of the 2020 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education exams is 35 per cent complete.

A total of 1,191,725 candidates in 28,467 schools were registered to sit the exam.

Speaking in Murang’a county on Monday as he supervised the opening of examination containers for the ongoing KCSE exams, Magoha said all measures have been put in place to ensure results are released in good time.

Click here to download Knec transport schedule for KCPE examiners in pdf

The CS further urged centre managers to ensure they use school buses to collect and drop exams from containers saying they shouldn’t use private vehicles or motorcycles.

The 2020 KCPE exams started on March 22 and ended on March 24 with rehearsals having been done on March 19.

Some 1,181,725 candidates sat the exam which is an increase from 1,083,456 learners who sat the 2019 exam.

Among 3,500 girls in primary school who were found to be pregnant, more than 200 candidates sat for the exam.

Last week Basic Education PS Julius Jwan said the marking of the exam had begun.

Jwan said the marking is being conducted by teachers contracted by the Kenya National Examination Council.

He said both electronic and manual marking was underway and the council has engaged the services of 7,000 examiners.

“We’ve begun marking the KCPE exam and are very impressed in the manner the examination was run. We definitely expect the same for the KCSE exam,” Jwan said.

Since 2017, Knec has been using a hybrid marking system with manual and electronic elements.

Electronic detection of answers on candidates’ answer sheets covers five subjects with multiple choices—Mathematics, English, Kiswahili, Science, Social Studies and Religious Education. Optical mark recognition machines acquired in 2017 are used.

However, Kiswahili Insha and English Composition are marked by contracted teachers.

This comes even as sector players called for leniency in the marking process.

The examination calendar was altered from the usual November-December calendar to this year following the outbreak of the current Coronavirus pandemic.