The Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) and Kenya Primary School Education Assessment (KPSEA) exams that kicked off on Monday have been concluded in Kiambu county without major hitches reported.
In Kiambu Sub County, a total of 44,140 sat for their KCPE papers while 47,825 candidates sat for their KPSEA examination.
Speaking to KNA, Kiambu Sub-County Director of Education Mrs Roselyne Litaba said that there were no cases of malpractice during the exam period that ran smoothly with only a few minor hitches on day one.
“It was a challenge giving out the papers in the morning because it took a long time but we were able to cope with that by starting as early as 6am,” she said.
Litaba also stated that there was one case of a student who did not report to do the exams but the teachers were able to locate her and she was able to sit for the exam.
Litaba added that she hopes and expects schools in Kiambu Sub-County to perform well in this exams.
“It’s my expectation that we will do better than last time. In the last KCPE, we had a mean of about 278 out of 500 and it is my hope that this time we will see an improvement,” she added.
Petronila Mukami an exam Supervisor at Kiambu Township Primary School told KNA that they had a few challenges especially for KPSEA candidates stating that due to a high number of learners in the school, distributing the papers was hectic.
“We had hitches on day one for KPSEA because all the nominal that came the names of all learners were arranged alphabetically but come to the answer sheets they were not arranged in any particular form. We had to get all leaners to go outside for us to distribute the answer sheets forms,” she said.
Mukami however added that despite the challenges on day one of the exam, they were able to come up with ways on how to distribute the answer sheets from day two which went on smoothly.
Mukami noted that it would be easy if the Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) provided grade six learners with index numbers like in the case for KCPE candidates or arranged the answer sheets accordingly to make it easy.
“Going forward, I would expect this exam not be done at the same time. I would like to recommended that the Examination Council separate KCPE and KPSEA Examinations from being done at the same time,” she stated.
Mukami said that as much the grade six learners were confused during the exam period considering that it was their first time, she expects that they will perform very well and give the best results.
On Monday, Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu said that malpractices would not be condoned in the examinations especially for the Grade Six assessment.
Around 1.3 million students undertook for the first time the KPSEA exams and they are expected to graduate and proceed to grade 7 or Junior secondary under the Competence Based Curriculum (CBC).
What now remains in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) which will see some 884, 263 candidates take up the examination from December 2 to December 23.
