The Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations kicked off nationally last week. Like in the past few years, the public was treated to media reports of examinations cheating by candidates and their proxies, despite feeble attempts by the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC), the government body in charge of these matriculation exams.
The truth came out last week, with arrests of teachers allegedly with access to the exams, to cartels transmitting and selling the exams and to students who had proxies sitting the examinations on their behalf. In one of these cases, an individual arrested turned out to be an “informer” working for KNEC, and who over the past few years has been working undercover and busting some of these cartels.
But the bit that was interesting were reports that corrupt individuals with access to the examination papers, were actually using high tech devices in the cheating. The individuals with access actually scan the pages with blue tooth enabled portable scanners, send the scanned pages to their smart phones, and through an elaborate scheme send via blue tooth, MMS and even emails the scanned examination pages to their agents, then pass on the same to the students who need who purchase them for ‘preview’ for between USD 5o and USD 100. This in a third world country, where 60% of its population lives below the poverty line! According to the media, the government is now working closely with the mobile phone providers to track down the crooks messing up its education system and values.
That’s how competitive and cut throat the education system is in Kenya>
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