By Sam Otieno
A surprise move by the Kenya National Examination Council on the delivery of exams papers caused delays of yesterday’s papers in many places.
Papers were delivered directly by Knec officials to various District Education Offices apart from areas such as Tana River, Mombasa and Garissa.
The move is meant to reduce the number of people who come into contact with the examination papers.
DEOs were instructed to wait in their stations until Knec staff delivered the examination materials.
Initially, DEOs were mandated to go to a common distribution centre where they would collect the exams for their areas.
Knec Chief Executive Officer Paul Wasanga said the idea was borrowed from countries where the administration of exams has been efficient.
According to Wasanga, the experiment would be considered in the future if Knec will have capacity.
"Knec officers were moving from place to place to distribute the papers and we wanted to know the impact when papers are directly delivered by the council," said Wasanga.
He termed the experiment a success in most areas but added that a few hitches occurred in far-flung areas due to poor road network.
However, he said the rest of the papers will be delivered normally meaning that the papers will be taken to police armouries a day in advance.
Measures to avoid leakages
Only papers within Nairobi and its environs are usually delivered on a daily basis from Knec but papers destined for upcountry are usually delivered a day in advance.
In the past, the entire examination papers were delivered a week to the start of the exam and stored in police armouries but the procedure led to rampant leakage of exams.
Wasanga said the move to deliver the exam on their own was to reduce the accountability of the exam materials to Knec staff only.
"We would want to deliver the examinations daily direct from our offices once we have the capacity," he said.
He said the delivery method used yesterday only, was an experiment borrowed from Ghana where examination personnel distribute the papers to various centres without involving outsiders.
