Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu now says some school principals misled the public with fake mean scores in the 2022 Kenya Certificate of Secondary School Educations Examination (KCSE) results.
Appearing before the National Assembly's Education Committee on Thursday, April 13, Machogu said the school heads were on the ministry's radar.
“There’s a school in my sub-county where the principal lied on their notice board that they had achieved a mean score of 7 points yet they had 4 points,” Machogu told the MPs.
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Machogu noted that some of the fake results were shared widely on social media.
“We are even aware that there’s a principal in Kakamega who did the same so what was in the media was not real compared to the truth from the exam body,” he added.
At the same time, Machogu dismissed as propaganda claims that schools in Nyamira and Kisii counties were involved in exam malpractices, saying Siaya topped in the Nyanza region with a total of 72 'A'- grades.
“There has been a portrayal in the mainstream media and social media that schools from certain counties achieved extraordinary scores. Kisii and Nyamira counties have especially been targeted,” the education CS said.
“Contrary to this propaganda, Kisii and Nyamira counties actually had the least number of Grade As in the Nyanza region. Siaya county had the highest number of As in the Nyanza region with 72, followed by Homa Bay and Migori with 62 and Kisumu with 59. Kisii was the second last County in the region with 51As while Nyamira was the last county with 30As. Kiambu topped with 226As.”
The committee is investigating claims of widespread cheating in last year's examination, where some schools recorded significant improvement compared to previous years.
"We had schools which moved from a mean grade of 6 to 10. As a committee, we have the responsibility to find out what was it that happened," Education Committee chair Julius Melly said.
According to Melly, preliminary findings show that there was massive cheating in the 2022 exams whose results were released in January.
The chair, while disclosing plans to summon Machogu and officials from the Kenya National Examinations Council (Knec) last month, said some stakeholders had confessed that there was cheating.
Upon the conclusion of investigations, Melly said, the committee will recommend measures to ensure the integrity of future exams.
“As a committee, we want to bring this exam cheating to an end. We are probing KCSE because there was an uproar across the whole country. Some schools had a mean score of six and shot up all the way up to 10, and some had three and got seven. This is where the issue is,” the MP added.
“We want to see the extent and curb it. I won’t say we will recall the 2022 KCSE certificates but we want to investigate the extent of the vice."
