The marking of 2023 KCPE exams was full proof says PS Kipsang

Education Principal Secretary Belio Kipsang says the marking of the 2023 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) Examination was full proof. He was speaking while defending results before National Assembly Education Committee Wednesday where he pointed out that the marking of the exams was of the highest standards.
“The marking includes a period of coordination of the marking schemes and quality
assurance by the senior examiners where they randomly sample what has been
marked by each examiner and remark to ensure the scoring does not deviate from the marking scheme,” the PS stated.
The Kenya National Examinations Council further indicated that errors witnessed in varying marks for the 2023 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education were only limited to the SMS platform, which they say was down to the provider.
In a report, KNEC says the truncation and misalignments were caused by configuration issues on the interface used to access results data from the database of the service provided by mobile network operators.
“KNEC verified the query and noted that the challenge was only affecting the results accessed through the SMS services. The SMS service provider identified the issues of results data truncation and encoding that affected accurate and complete representation of the characters in the SMS text,” the report from KNEC said.
The examinations body says the issues were rectified in about ten minutes and the results sent through SMS after the correction were indicating the correct grade and in expected format.
Meanwhile, KNEC says it is keen to ensure that all disputes arising from the examinations are resolved within the stipulated thirty days.
“KNEC has been receiving and reviewing queries from clients since the release of the results. The review of the queries involves the verification of the score in the database and the candidate’s answer script,” said the exams body.
There have been numerous issues raised around the exams, but KNEC says the entire process was beyond reproach and the few issues that have arisen will be dealt with in utmost dignity and fairness.
KNEC said that the processing of the 2023 KCPE took the longest number of days since 2016 when the Ministry of Education introduced reforms in national examinations. The process took twenty two days.
Agencies