The Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examination comes to an end this week. The candidates who have been sitting for papers in the past one month will finally go home. The teachers invigilating the exams and education officers will also go home, away from the tension that comes with the examination. Why? Because, as the media has reported since the examination began, there have been attempts by candidates in some schools to cheat.
But why does this happen every year? Malpractices in exams are common. The media faithfully reported these attempts. There have been instances of cancellation of exam results for some schools, as it happened last year, and consequent appeals by the concerned schools. The media have reported cases where learners had scores that were too predictable to be true. Education officials, all the way from the Cabinet Secretary to the county officers, have vowed to stamp out the malpractices. But like an unsatisfied spirit, the ghost of exam cheating appears unbothered.
This case needs a good investigative journalist to find out why this problem cannot go away. Someone needs to find out if the culprits are the young men and women supposedly ‘selling’ the ‘real’ exam papers on Telegram platform to unsuspecting parents and students or there are other persons involved. The media needs to look at the data and establish the patterns of cheating. What subjects interest the cheats most? What time of the day does the cheating happen most? What gender cheats more? Are there specific regions with the most attempts to steal exams? The media needs to ask the authorities difficult questions about the setting, printing, distribution, invigilation, marking and grading of the examination.
If entry into university and the so-called marketable courses is based on this one criterion, then profiteers will have a reason to ‘sell’ guesswork as the ‘real’ examination. Desperate individuals – candidates, parents, teachers and school administrators – will have a reason to secretly procure the leaked examination. But there are more terrifying consequences in the long run for the cheats in society.
Thus, the media should seek to unearth the root of this dark scheme. Reading the newspapers and listening to news on radio and TV in the past few weeks, one gets the impression that the media is not doing its job of reporting the malpractice.
The media is possibly the only institution that could unearth the real source of this annual ritual of exam cheating. Clearly, the security agencies have failed. The examination council probably does not have the ability to internally investigate. In seeking to unearth the truth about the examination cheating, the media would be doing it for purely selfless reasons. Finding out who is responsible for the cheating and why it really happens might not completely end cheating in examinations in Kenya, but it could safeguard the future of many Kenyans from professional charlatans.
