KNEC Explains Why It Confessed Awarding Wrong Marks To 2023 KCPE Candidates

The Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) has spoken after it confessed to releasing some results containing errors a day following the release of the 2023 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) results. 

In the statement dated Saturday, November 25, KNEC acknowledged receiving appeals from some affected schools which were dissatisfied with their results as received by the institutions and the candidates via the SMS code 40054.

The KNEC Rules of 2015 Legal Notice 131 on the marking of examinations, release of results and certification, Rule 27, provides for candidates/schools to lodge appeals for review of the examination results to the Council in writing within thirty days from the date of release of the examination results. 

The council divulged that some candidates had misaligned marks and graded in Kiswahili as they were placed in the Kenyan Sign Language.

"There were also cases where the grades in Science and Social Studies and Religious Education were truncated incorrectly and were missing the plus (+) and minus (-) signs as expected.

"The error affected only the SMS results due to configuration issues, as the results in the KNEC portal are accurate. KNEC notified the SMS service provider, and the error in the text messages was resolved immediately," KNEC explained.

The council also revealed that it had received queries from candidates with low marks in some of the subjects, mainly in English and Kiswahili.

"KNEC has reviewed all the appeals and found that there were one hundred and thirty-three (133) candidates affected. These cases have all been addressed, and results for the affected candidates have been updated appropriately," added the council.

KNEC also studied the KCPE examination results for a school that was widely circulated on social media forums indicating all the candidates in the school attained an identical mark of 75 in Science.

Upon review of the results for the school and all the reports that were received from the examination centres and anonymous letters, it noted that it had not found any indication that the school was involved in examination malpractice. 

"Science is a multiple-choice question paper, thus making it possible for the candidates to get identical marks. Though this may be assumed to be an examination irregularity, it is not adequate evidence for KNEC to sanction the results for candidates without a supporting report that cheating happened during the administration of the examination," KNEC argued.

Candidates have been advised to visit their schools and collect the official provisional results slips and raise any query for review of their results, if any, within the stipulated 30-day period.

According to Education Cabinet Secretary (CS) Ezekiel Machogu who released the results on Thursday, November 23, over 1.4 million pupils sat for the 2023 KCPE exams.

The CS however revealed that 9,354 candidates failed to sit for the exams but promised that the Ministry would conduct thorough mapping and administer a special examination in January 2024.