KCPE results row: CS Machogu dismisses Raila's claims of corruption, insists no errors in tenders

Machogu says the ministry awards printing tenders to different firms every exam year and that the local company did its work above board.

”I would like to clear the air that no one’s contract was terminated, every year there is a contract that is awarded, we are competent enough and we have the capacity to print exams here, the procedure was followed,” Machogu insisted.

Azimio-One Kenya Coalition leader Raila Odinga has already made good his intention to write to 15 agencies including religious organizations, investigative agencies and players in the education sector to form a task force to probe reports of corruption in the ministry. 

He wants the ministry and KNEC to explain how the UK company that has been printing exams since 2016 was locked out and the tender awarded to a company that lacked capacity resulting in the errors.

During a session with the Education Committee on Thursday, the CS said they were conducting a forensic audit to diagnose and address issues raised by members of the public.

The KNEC CEO Dr David Njengere who accompanied the cabinet secretary indicated that they had received 1043 complaints and had so far resolved over 700.

The numerous complaints and claims of irregularities in the 2023 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education prompted the education committee to summon the education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu to shed light on the matter.

“You are saying you did verification, who failed or slept on his job?” Manyatta MP Gitonga Mkunji asked. 

Lugari MP Nabii Nabwera added: “Pupil x who got sign language results and did not do the subject suffered down jeopardy, first wrong results and two, the parents were charged for SMS.”

Narok Woman Representative Rebecca Tonkei wondered why the KNEC has always charged for relaying examination results to pupils each year.

“Have you ever thought of a way of relaying these results without a cost?” she asked.

In his response, however, the KNEC CEO said that back in 2018, if anyone had an error message, the telecommunication companies would not charge. He said they were in talks for people to be refunded for such costs.

“We have written to the telcos to confirm to us what they indicated that no one was charged for error messages, if anyone was charged refund would be made, we had a similar case in 2018, and no one was charged.” 

The Chairman of the Education Committee Julius Melly echoed the sentiments by Tonkei saying the platform should be free.

“This issue of 25 shillings results should be as free as free education,” he said.

Mandera South MP Haro Abdul wanted to know why the SMS was erroneous and called for an audit of the same.

“The public out there thinks that the sms is just the tip of the iceberg and that the sms is symptomatic of the rot in the exam system to allay these fears and settle the worries, what would the ministry lose if we expand the scope of the audit to unregistered candidates, students that did well before not performing and why parents relied on sms instead of the KNEC portal,” he said.

Machogu insisted that the exam and announced results passed the test.

“This year, anomalies of assigning different grades to identical marks were only in the SMS platform, in the school portal there were no such anomalies which one would have found, it was brought to our attention that some were missing plus or minus,” the CS said.

“There are no anomalies in the results that were sent by KNEC to all schools, 28533 which were obtainable in the portal as accessed through passwords in the schools, the schools print then issue a result slip to every candidate."

 Dr. Belio Kipsang added: “After the document reading and marking the process of combining results requires a certain threshold, it required 99% of the candidates' scores to be accounted for, by the time of release we had 99.321% which is higher than the global requirement of 95%.”

The ministry is in the next two weeks expected to have a meeting with the ICT counterpart to find out why results uploaded to the platforms of SMS providers had a mix-up and further how they will forge a partnership to initiate a ministry-run results transmission system.