Knec CEO gives reasons why marking of KCPE takes shorter time

Standard Eight candidates usually receive their KCPE results less than a month after the completion of their exams.

This is because KCPE takes a shorter time to mark since examiners have the help of machines during marking.

Knec CEO David Njengere said a technological procedure is implemented to mark KCPE papers.

“For KCPE we used personalized Optical Marked Readers to facilitate machine reading so that when you’re running them you know this belongs to a student,” Njengere said.

OMR works in a way that it identifies the students’ index number and name on the answer sheet.

Njengere spoke at Maina Wanjigi Secondary School in Eastleigh where he oversaw the distribution of day two exams.

Every student had an answer sheet with their index number and name already printed.

This means all written subjects are marked using OMR and not individuals.

Creative writing subjects are an exception to the OMR marking.

Teachers take part in marking Insha and Composition using pen and paper.

The examiners already reported to their respective marking centres two days ago.

A spot check by the Star revealed that in terms of examination papers, Maths papers for both KPSEA and KCPE had a separate working area.

The answers would be ticked on a separate answer sheet which has a learners index /assessment number and name already printed.

Education CS Ezekiel Machogu said the ministry is already working on processing the results.

Machogu was speaking in Nyaribari Masaba, Kisii county, on December 12.

“Next week we are announcing KCPE examination results and you will not hear any cases of cheating under the leadership of Machogu. The grading of Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) is progressing well and I can assure you, the results will not be riddled with any irregularities,” Machogu said.

He reiterated that the ministry has taken necessary steps to curb cheating.

A total of 1,287,597 candidates were registered for the KPSEA and 1,244,188 candidates for KCPE across 493 examination storage and distribution centres.