The Kenya National Examinations Council, Knec, has issued a statement on the mistakes reported in the 2023 KCPE examinations. Some candidates observed mistakes in the results that range from wrong grading and having ‘foreign’ subjects on their results like Kenya Sign Language. Some of the schools which have contested the results include Moi Kabarak Primary School from Nakuru.

The Knec SMS Code 40054 had issues with parents and candidates waiting for many hours to receive the results.

Here is the response from Knec;

QUERIES ON THE 2023 KCPE EXAMINATION RESULTS

The Ministry of Education released the 2023 KCPE examination results for 1,406,557 on Wednesday, 23rd November 2023.

The KNEC Rules of 2015 Legal Notice 131 on the marking of examinations, release of results and certification, Rule 27, provides for candidates/schools to lodge appeals for review of the examination results to the Council in writing within thirty days from the date of release of the examination results.

In this regard, KNEC received appeals from some affected schools on dissatisfaction on their results as received by candidates/schools through the SMS code 40054.

It was brought to the attention of KNEC that results for some candidates had misalignment of the marks and grades in Kiswahili as they were placed at the Kenyan Sign Language.

There were also cases where the grades in Science and Social Studies & Religious Education were truncated incorrectly and were missing the plus (+) and minus (-) signs as expected. The error affected only the SMS results due to configuration issues, as the results in the KNEC portal are accurate. KNEC notified the SMS service provider and the error in the text messages was resolved immediately.

KNEC also received queries from candidates with low marks in some of the subjects, mainly in English and Kiswahili. KNEC has reviewed all the appeals and found that there were one hundred and thirty-three (133) candidates affected. These cases have all been addressed and results for the affected candidates updated appropriately.

KNEC has studied the KCPE examination results for a school that was widely circulated on social media forums indicating all the candidates in the school attained an identical marks of 75 in Science.

KNEC has reviewed the results for the school and all the reports that were received from the examination centres and anonymous letters and has not found any indication that the school was involved in examination malpractices.

Science is a multiple-choice question paper, thus making it possible for the candidates to get identical marks. Though this maybe assumed to be an examination irregularity, it is not adequate evidence for KNEC to sanction the results for candidates without a supporting report that cheating happened during the administration of examination.

Candidates have been advised to visit their schools and collect the official provisional results slips and raise any query for review of their results, if any, within the stipulated 30 days period.

Dr David Njengere, MBS
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

HEADQUARTERS: The New Mitihani House, South C, PO Box 73598-00200 City Square, NAIROBI, KENYA
Telephone: (+254-20) 341098/50/71, 317419/12/13, 341113 Fax: (+254-20) 2226032
E-mail: ceo@ knec.ac.ke; Website: www.knec.ac.ke