The Judiciary has advised the Departmental Committee on Education to institute legal changes and transfer the National Examination Council Tribunal from the Ministry of Education to the Judiciary.
The Judiciary made the recommendations when it appeared before the Committee on Thursday to give a status report on pending and concluded examination-related cases.
“Owing to the mandate of the Tribunal, we propose that the Committee should initiate statutory amendments to transit the Tribunal to the Judiciary as decreed by Article 159(1)(d) of the Constitution to secure its operational and decisional independence,” Registrar of Judiciary Anne Amadi said.
“Once this transition is anchored in law, the Judiciary is ready to operationalize the Tribunal to give examination candidates a forum to lodge any disputes they may have with the Kenya National Examinations Council when it exercises its power to cancel results.”
Currently, the National Examination Council Tribunal operates under the Ministry of Education by dint of the Kenya National Examination Act, 2012.
The tribunal is mandated to handle appeals lodged by candidates whose national examination results are withheld, nullified or cancelled by Kenya National Examination Council.
Its chairperson and members are appointed by the Education Cabinet Secretary although the Judicial Service Commission nominates the chair prior to the appointment by the CS.
However, Amadi told MPs the tribunal has not been functional for lack of a chairperson.
"Indeed, the Judicial Service Commission undertook a competitive recruitment of the chairperson and forwarded the name of a nominee for gazettement by the CS Education in May 2023. However, the chairperson has not been appointed by Gazette, and the tribunal is not yet operational."
Meanwhile, the Judiciary said it has so far handled 25 cases of alleged cheating and malpractices in the 2022 KCSE examinations.
It said it has concluded 15 of the cases while the remaining 10 are at advanced stages of the trial process.
“Whereas we have had case backlog attributable to a number of historical challenges, the exam-related cases have been processed fairly quickly due to active case management in criminal proceedings and other strategies instituted over the past decade to address case backlog,” Amadi said in her report to the committee.
