Parents bear the biggest responsibility over exam malpractices in the country, Basic Education PS Belio Kipsang has said.
Speaking in Nyeri on Thursday, the PS said parents are the ones who fund activities related to exam cheating, including compromising officials assigned to oversee the exams and allowing their children to carry phones.
“Our biggest problem in our examinations is we adults, the parents in most cases because when you hear people saying there’s mobilisation of resources to compromise our staff, the people mobilising resources are not our staff it is we parents,” Kipsang said.
The PS was speaking at the Deputy County Commissioner's office in Nyeri County after overseeing the distribution of KCSE examination papers.
He was addressing centre managers and the security team overseeing the exams in the county.
Kipsang questioned why some parents see it fit to mobilise resources to aid in exam malpractices yet candidates had four years to prepare for the tests.
The PS, however, revealed that so far, there have been no major incidents touching on cheating in the ongoing KCSE exams.
“We have not had any major case that worries us this year. Other than a few cases of telephones, the cases of early exposures that we have had, this year they were very minimal, extremely minimal.”
Kipsang said the Ministry of Education will crack the whip against those who will be found culpable for the few reported cases, be it officials, parents, or candidates.
“This time and going forward, responsibility will be at a personal level; personal to the child, personal to all our officers who are in examination administration, be they from the Ministry of Interior, be they from our ministry, be they from TSC, they will take personal responsibility,” he warned.
The PS further disclosed that the number of candidates writing their exams in hospitals has gone up this year, once again laying the blame on parents and society as a whole for the worrying trend.
The PS said the candidates are rarely impregnated by their colleagues at school but rather, they carry the pregnancies from home.
“These teenage pregnancies are not about our young boys, it’s about us adults and unless we deal with this abuse of our girls, then it’s going to give us problems in the future,” he said.
“We must deal with it now. I will not give numbers but I can tell you for sure the number of cases who took examinations in hospitals is slightly higher than it was last year,” Kipsang revealed.
Over 900,000 candidates are sitting this year’s KCSE exams which started on October 22 starting with oral and practical exams for the elective subjects.
The exam papers contain new features to prevent cheating, such as personalised question papers with pre-printed candidates’ names.
The candidates will sit their final paper on November 22.
