Exams council admits 2016 KCPE results had mistakes

The exams council has admitted some pupils at Nyali Primary School were awarded wrong marks in last year's national examinations.

Parents went to court after they got dissatisfied with the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) exam results after candidates performed dismally compared to previous years.

They insisted their children's papers were not properly marked and demanded they be remarked.

After discovering what they considered to be errors in the results of some candidates, the parents wrote to the Kenya National Exams Council (Knec) seeking an explanation. They then went to Knec headquarters in Nairobi where the council corrected the marks of two candidates.

The parents decided to seek court orders to be allowed to access the answer sheets of all candidates.

In a petition filed in the Mombasa High Court, the parents argued the results were riddled with irregularities, were not properly marked and did not reflect the candidates' performance.

Yesterday, Knec lawyer Geoffrey Obura admitted before Justice Erick Ogola in Mombasa that a pupil, Abdullahi Abdulkadir Abdikadir, initially scored 62 marks or B- in Science but got 73 marks (B+) in the subject after further probe by Knec.

He said the same boy, who got zero in Mathematics over claims he never wrote the Mathematics paper, was awarded 81 marks (A) and eventually scored 362 marks after the appeal to KNEC.

WRONG ELLIPSES

"It is true there were some mistakes but the main problem lay with the pupils who shaded the wrong ellipses (in the answer sheet)," said the lawyer. He alleged that through the said wrongful shading, some candidates were deemed to be missing from examination centres.

The lawyer admitted KNEC also rectified the Kiswahili results of Ntwiga Delvis Mutembei. Consequently, her marks in the subject were changed from 32 to 77 (A-).

Meanwhile, documents filed in court by the parents' lawyer Macmillan Jengo yesterday showed that six other candidates received wrong results that were later rectified upwards by Knec.

Jengo asked the court to order Knec to allow teachers from the school and Knec examiners to go through all candidates' answer sheets to ascertain if other pupils were affected.

Activist Okiya Omtata had also made a similar request to the court.

But Obura explained Knec was the only agency allowed by the law to examine and re-examine the examination papers and not the teachers or parents.

Omtata further said last year's KCPE papers were riddled with mistakes and in some cases the questions had two correct answers.

The judge will deliver his verdict on May 22.