Seal gaps where exams are set and kept

We live in a digital age where information flows easily. While this is excellent most of the time, it has posed challenges in certain areas. Examination cheating especially at the KCSE level is one such area. This serious vice undermines our education system and must be dealt with firmly.

Maintaining the integrity of examination is crucial given that results in the final secondary school exam determine eligibility for publicly funded university education. Unfortunately, all examinations will inevitably face attempts to compromise the testing process by a few unscrupulous individuals. Today, these efforts are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Robust test security measures are becoming ever more essential.

The most frequent, and ultimately corrosive, type of cheating in Kenya is ‘leakage’ a reference to a situation where some candidates are vested of the examination questions before they enter the examination room.

Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiangi’s heart was therefore in the right place when he announced that the government would finally be cracking the whip on exam cheating. Matiang’i said he was saddened that school heads and teachers were on the fore front in encouraging, aiding and perpetuating exam cheating. It is right that those who perpetrate cheating should be disciplined by the teacher’s service commission as recommended by the Cabinet Secretary.

What makes little sense, and achieves equally little, however, is Matiang'i’s directive banning visiting and prayer days in the third term. Surely the good CS is aware that there are day schools. Will they now enjoy a monopoly on the leakage? Will ill students in boarding schools be prevented from seeking medical attention as well? Does the CS recall that we still have a functioning postal service? How about smuggled mobile phones? At any rate if the people at the forefront of the cheating enterprise are the teachers, will contact between them and the candidates be banned as well?

In this day and age, while it is possible to sequester people, it is much more difficult to control the information they receive. The answer to secure examinations lies not in locking up the children in schools, which is impossible anyway, but in better managing how the exams are set, stored, printed, transported and distributed.

Irregularities in these areas cannot be mitigated by turning boarding schools into prisons in the third term. The CS must therefore do better— the worst lesson we can teach students is that it pays to take shortcuts and flaunt the rules. Every individual who tests unfairly reduces the credibility of the overall process. They deny an honest test-taker the position they deserve. More worryingly, a cheater may go on to assume a professional position of trust such as a physician, medic or teacher without actually being qualified, thus jeopardising public health or safety. It is very depressing to imagine what would befall our country if exam cheaters eventually cheated their way into the public service. As it is, things are already very grim but it is not unimaginable that corruption could become even more glorified than it currently is. Such characters would launch themselves at the national cake with greater vigor than hyenas ravish newborn gazelles. There is an urgent need to vindicate and reinforce the idea that hard work and honesty in due course bear rewards.

A secure testing framework requires the combination of sound practices, secure technology, actionable intelligence and above all vigilant, trained personnel. One hopes that the CS’s words will not fizzle into nothingness. The greatest deterrent to cheating would be identifying a source of exam leakage and making sure that such a person dons the zebra stripes of our correctional facilities. If this occurred with sufficient regularity and magnitude, examinations would be far less leaked. Given that our Police and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions need to be willing and competent to achieve such a feat, it will remain open season for exam cheats.