Fifty inmates among 6,000 candidates to sit for KCPE

By Antony Gitonga        

Fifty inmates from Naivasha GK Prison will be among the close to 6,000 of candidates from Naivasha who will be seating for KCPE that kicks off on Tuesday.

A third of the inmates are serving life sentence while another 17 are on death row in the largest penal institution in the country.

This is an increase in the number of candidates as last year 38 inmates sat for the exam with the highest scoring 350 marks.

And hours to the exam, the inmates exuded confidence saying that they were ready for the challenge ahead of them.

Despite various challenges and been incarcerated, the inmates said that their teachers had prepared them well.

On his part, the officer in charge Patrick Mwenda said that he expected better results from the inmates.

Mwenda identified lack of learning materials and acute shortage of teachers as some of the major challenges they faced.

"We have 50 candidates for this year’s exam and despite various challenges we are confident that we shall perform well," he said.

Mwenda said that education had turned out to be a major tool of rehabilitation in the prison with many of the inmates joining class.

"We have over 1,200 inmates in our education programme and we are committed to increasing the numbers with time," he said.

Naivasha district education officer Peter Orina said that all preparations for the exams were on and exams were under police custody.He said that there were 5,991 candidates seating for the exam from Naivasha district with the number of girls standing at 2,918.

"We are all set for the national exams and we have enough security officers and invigilators for the exercise," he said.