Forty people have been arrested so far for attempting to leak the ongoing KCSE exam, which enters Day 16.
They include invigilators, supervisors, police and students accused of colluding to allow early exposure. Four students have been deregistered and will no longer be sitting the test.
The Kenya National Examination Council says bribery has facilitated early exposure — the main cause of leakage. Those involved compromise parents, students and security officers to sneak in papers. Phones ease their work. Because of this, external monitors have been deployed to schools identified as hotspots. They arrive unannounced.
Knec in its earlier directive made head teachers the sole personnel allowed to have phones. It cautioned them against walking into exam rooms with the phones. Invigilators’ phones are locked away before an exam starts.
Council chairman George Magoha yesterday said monitoring of the phones has not been reliable because of the high number of school heads — 20,000 centre managers.
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Magoha said cases under probe involve head teachers photocopying exam papers, sneaking written materials into exam rooms and assisting students to answer questions through compromised invigilators.
“Protection of the exam is the responsibility of Knec and centre managers on a ratio of 70:30,” he said.
The council is responsible for the exam for a longer time but expects school heads to take charge soon after picking papers from safety containers. Magoha said schools close to the containers are the main cheating hotspots. The materials take a shorter time to get to them. This allows an interval exploited by cheats before the official exam time.
“We’ve maintained that exams be opened only on the scheduled time. Opening them a few minutes earlier or later could have serious consequences,” he said. “Some head teachers collude with invigilators to get an extra paper, answer the questions and give it back to students.”