By VITALIS KIMUTAI and FRANCIS ONTOMWA
The examinations council has been faulted for asking examiners to meet their training costs before marking national exams.
Kenya Union of Post-Primary Education Teachers (Kuppet) has expressed dissatisfaction with the Kenya National Examination Council ( Knec) for allegedly asking teachers to pay Sh11,000 as fees for an examiners’ course.
The union yesterday said Knec and Teachers Service Commission (TSC) should incur the cost of training examiners and warned that pushing the cost back to individual teachers was illegal.
The union’s Deputy National Treasurer Ronald Tonui and Mr Edward Obwocha, Secretary in charge of Secondary Section told teachers to defy the order until the matter is solved.
“If the matter is not sorted out by Knec and TSC, we shall ask the examiners to boycott marking until the terms and conditions of marking are improved,” Tonui said.
Kuppet has given a two-week ultimatum to Knec to address the issue that directly affects teachers who will mark the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) and Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) exams at the end of the year.
The Kenya Education Management Institute (Kemi) last week in an advert in the local daily newspapers invited teachers to apply to be trained as Knec examiners.
The new move has irked teachers as traditionally, it is Knec that meets the cost of their training, annually.
Kuppet told The Standard that teachers were not only being misused but also underpaid at a time when inflation was at an all time high.
“ Knec was given its usual allocation last year which should be used to train examiners. We are wondering who wants to pocket the money,” Obwocha said.
The union said that teachers should be reimbursed every time they travel to different locations to mark exams.
