Supervisor held over exam leakage

By STANLEY ONGWAE

A supervisor in the ongoing Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) was arrested for allegedly leaking a test.

Awendo OCPD Moses Kuria said the teacher, a supervisor at Pe Hill Secondary School, was arrested after he reportedly irregularly exposed contents of the Chemistry Paper 2 test.

The test papers were taken into custody at the private secondary school an hour after the mandatory starting time of the examinations.

A Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) official, Maundu Matenzoni, said they chose to act after being informed that the supervisor had been engaging in exam malpractices since the start of the exercise late last month.

“We had initial reports that the teacher has been helping some candidates to cheat in the ongoing tests and that is why we decided to carry out our independent investigations to ascertain the allegation,” said Mr Maundu.

The examiner told The Standard the supervisor had picked the examination papers from Awendo Police Station armory and left without being accompanied by police officers.

“The officials who were tracking the teacher using chase cars went straight to the school he was manning but did not find him there. He resurfaced an hour later,” said the OCPD.

Kuria said scrutiny of the package containing the papers revealed that it had been tampered with.

“When he reported at the centre, the package was torn using what we suspected was a very sharp object,” said Matenzoni.

However, it could not be ascertained if the police manning security of the exam had a role in the alleged malpractice.

package tampered with

But KNEC officials absolved the police from blame, saying the supervisor could choose not to be accompanied by the security guards.

The OCPD said investigations were underway to establish if there were other people involved in tampering with the exam.

This is the second incident of cheating to be reported by the examiner this week.

On Wednesday, a Bungoma County couple was arrested for sending examination material through a text message to their daughter sitting the exam.