KNEC Deregisters Over 370,000 KCPE, KCSE 2019 Candidates

The Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) has canceled the registration of 371,629 KCPE, KCSE 2019 students over malpractice during the registration process.

The examinations body has accused the deregistered candidates of using fake birth certificates in the process. Parents and school administration have been alleged to work in collusion to fake the birth papers to acquire illegitimate candidature for the National exams.

A majority of the deregistered students have been reported to be in Primary schools where Meru County leads with the highest number of deregistered students at 27,452 while Marsabit has had the least cases at 45 deregistered candidates with 42 of them in primary schools.

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“We have listed several cases where schools manipulated the birth registration data to register students. Some just entered zeros while others entered some funny digits. We detected all theses and canceled the registrations,” Knec Chief Executive Officer Mercy Karogo said adding that the candidates would not be processed for the National exams unless the correct data was entered.

The Knec CEO noted that the irregularities were detected during a validation exercise by the body after February 22^nd when the candidates had been asked by the exam body to verify their details.

The huge number of deregistered candidates reveals that most candidates and parents failed to verify their details before 22^nd February.

An original birth certificate is one of the documents that must be available during registration for the national exams. The registration process requires schools to enter details of the original birth certificate, a legitimate photograph, and name of the candidate, school code and the subjects to be sat in the exam.

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Knec is also looking into the allegations that some examination centers faked data to register students to maintain their center status. Examination centers expected to have a minimum number of candidates for the examination body to qualify.

Schools with 6 to 15 candidates are hosted in the examination centers but retain their code while schools with less than five candidates register their candidates in the approved examination center.

The outgoing Knec chairman George Magoha has been nominated by President Uhuru Kenyatta as Education Cabinet Secretary and hopes are high that he will stir the education ministry to the right path.