How exams cartels colluded over the years to cash in on high grades

Waweru James Nguyo, who is among this year's KCSE performers in Kirinyaga County is carried shoulder high by fellow orphans at the Little Angels Center for Orphans and Vulnerable Children in Mwea West Sub-County on 30/12/2016.He posted an A- of 77 points at Kianyaga Boys High School where he has been studying. [PHOTO/MUNENE KAMAU/STANDARD]

The good news that came from Shimo la Tewa High School when this year’s Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) results were released on Thursday is that Education Cabinet Secretary Dr Fred Matiang’i has successfully managed to block cartels that had degraded the reputation and credibility of the country’s education examination system.

But the bad news is that the architects and ring leaders who had planned, connived and captured the education sector’s testing and measurement network for their benefit are still free. Worse still, the sad story is that for about two decades, greed, opportunism and bad manners had established a road map for mediocre students to unfairly have a go at higher education, too often at the expense of the hard-working ones and to the detriment of academic standards.