Top schools shocked after their results are withheld

Teachers and parents of St Anthonys Boys Kitale, celebrate with the top student in Trans Nzoia County, Bivan Kipkoech, who scored an A (81 points) in KCSE.

A day after KCSE results were announced, some candidates are yet to receive their results. In Migori County, anxiety and helplessness reigned after it emerged that students from Nyabisawa Girls, a top performing school in Suna, Agenga Secondary in Nyatike and Kamotobo Secondary in Kuria had their results withheld over alleged malpractice.

Kamotobo was reportedly under the Kenya National Examination Council (Knec)’s radar over cheating. Knec and county officials visited the schools multiple times during the November exams.

Little is known about the events that led to the withholding of results from the other two schools as the officials could not be reached.

As other institutions all over the country openly celebrated their results, schools that did not get results remained vacated.

No explanation

Teachers from the schools bore the weight of anxious students and parents made relentless calls trying to understand why the results had been withheld.

Agenga Principal John Ragero said they did not receive any explanation for the withheld results.

“We do not understand why our results were not released since no irregularity issue was reported during the examination period,” he said.

He said county education officials had not communicated with them to explain when the 169 candidates from his school should expect their results.

Kamotobo Principal John Mosoba did not respond to our calls and texts, and neither did the County Director of Education, Lucas Kangogo.

At Nyabisawa, teachers were thrown off by shocker.

“I hope all is well, we have been in the best behaviour,” said one of the teachers who did not want to be named.

In Elgeyo Marakwet, 226 students from Kapkenda Girls, another popular school, are yet to receive their results. 

The gate remained closed and the principal, Jemima Sambai confirmed on phone that the girls were yet to get their results.

“We have sampled out some of the marks for our candidates and the response is a ‘W’ when you send an SMS,” said the principal. 

She said they will have to wait for the ministry to send them the results sheet so that they can confirm their fears. 

“When we talked to the officials on Friday, we were told to wait,” she added.

In Murang’a County, four candidates from Maragua Muslim Girls Secondary had their results cancelled over examination malpractice.

They were caught with mobile phones in the examination room by a security officer who discovered them hidden in their clothes.

County Director of Education Victoria Mulili said the matter was investigated by directorate of criminal investigations.

“The four were charged with malpractice before Kigumo Law Court,” said Ms Mulili.

In Meru, some students who had registered as private candidates got grade P to mean their results were still pending. Grade P is often given to students who have registration issues, uncleared repeaters or mismatched names on their documents.

While releasing the results on Saturday, Education CS Amina Mohamed said 100 candidates had their results cancelled  due to cheating.

(Reporting by Dalton Nyabundi, Isaiah Gwengi, Boniface Gikandi and Silah Koskei)