Hiring of over 230,000 staff to manage exams kicks off

Kisumu Girls School students revise ahead of the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education exams last year. (Photo: File/Standard)

The national examinations agency is recruiting 233,638 professionals to manage this year's primary and secondary school national examinations.

Kenya National Examinations Council (Knec) has asked the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) to vet and recommend teachers to be hired to administer the examinations.

In a letter to TSC Chief Executive Officer Nancy Macharia, Knec acting Secretary Mercy Karogo requested the vetting of prospective invigilators and supervisors.

"This is to request you to help in identification and vetting of supervision and invigilation personnel who are of high integrity, credible and able to pay attention to detail during the conduct of examinations.

"Supervisors must be senior teachers, preferably heads of departments," said Ms Karogo.

Some 1.6 million candidates were registered to write the examinations this year.

Of these, 1,003,556 candidates were registered for the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) exam and 615,773 for the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) papers.

The KCPE exams will be done in 28,566 centres while KCSE will be done in 9,350 centres.

A detailed breakdown of required staff shows that for KCPE examinations, a total of 156,450 officials will be contracted.

Of these, 61,824 will be supervisors, 26,498 invigilators, 52,672 security personnel and 15,456 drivers.

For KCSE, 35,388 invigilators, 10,000 supervisors, 19,542 security personnel and 9,771 centre managers will be deployed.

"It is my request that the TSC county directors be held accountable and responsible to facilitate the smooth administration of the national examinations," said Karogo in the letter dated July 12, 2017.

In addition to these, eight regional co-ordinators will be on duty as well as all the county security officers.

Private schools

The circular signed by Mary Rotich, acting director of teacher management, says teachers from private schools who are nominated must be registered by TSC and meet the specified qualities.

The details on examination administration personnel come a week after Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang'i announced that 67 additional metal containers would be procured.

This brings to 100 the total number of strongrooms that will be used to store exam papers during the administration exercise.

Installation of the containers in the sub-counties is expected to be completed by July 30.

Dr Matiang'i also announced that 100 additional vehicles had been purchased to ease transportation.