900,000 candidates to write KCPE exam Tuesday
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Preparations for this year’s Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examinations are underway across the country with candidates expected to sit their first paper Tuesday, October 10th morning.
The examinations are set to take place between Tuesday and Thursday and will see close to 900,000 candidates write it this year.
This number is 48,304 more than last year’s, where 889,163 candidates sat for the examination.
The candidates will start with the Mathematics paper on Tuesday morning followed by English Language and English Composition papers in the afternoon.
On Wednesday, they will write their Science, Kiswahili Lugha and Kiswahili Insha papers and conclude with Social Studies and Religious Studies on Thursday.
A spot check by Citizen Television in Nairobi’s St. George’s Primary School showed that students are well prepared for Tuesday’s Mathematics paper.
The school principal, Josephine Kivitu said the September month-long teachers’ strike affected the pupil’s revision but she is optimistic that the candidates will perform well.
On her part, Kivitu ruled out any possibilities of cases of exam irregularities as witnessed in the just ended Kenya Certificate of Secondary Examinations (KCSE).
Chief Executive of Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) Joseph Kivilu said: “The examination will be taken in 25,140 examination centers.”
Kivilu also noted there will be 1,070 distribution centers compared to 1,056 last year.
The KNEC official noted that there will be 5,959 private examination centers with 139,393 candidates. There are 19,176 public examination centers with 798,060 candidates.
Last month, KNEC announced that about 1.4 million candidates were to sit for this year’s national examinations KCPE and KCSE, with the exam dates for KSCE being set at between October 12th and November 5th.
Education Principal Secretary Dr. Bellio Kipsang had said that police choppers would airlift exam materials to places with impassable roads, adding that security would be enhanced during the period.
Meanwhile, a family in Gachororo, Juja was left in distraught after it emerged that their son had been denied registration.
The pupil at St. Jude Academy purportedly learnt he would not sit for the exam last Thursday since he was not registered by KNEC.
Even with the credibility of this year’s KCSE exams in question and the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) calling for the cancellation of the exams, the government has consistently denied the apparent leakage of the exams.
By Jemimah Gathoni / Additional Report by Ngei Musomba
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