It is almost routine that a day to the start of written Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations, the government agency in charge of the tests issues a statement on securing integrity of the assessments. This year was not different.
Among other things, the agency’s back-to-back communication goes to emphasise that exams fidelity is one of the most delicate exercises that governments across the world aim at.
In the November 1 communication the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) has banned the use of wristwatches by the more than one million candidates sitting the papers that will run until November 20.
KNEC’s chief executive, David Njengere, ruled out wristwatches “of any kind” for candidates in the exam rooms. Dr Njengere directed centre managers to provide wall clocks instead. In an insanely networked world, geeks and their agents have turned even the most mundane tools into ‘weapons of mass destruction’.
Just like Eneke the bird in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart that learnt to fly without perching to beat hawk-eyed hunters, KNEC is equally learning to keep exam cheats at an arm’s length to secure the economy from indefensible A-plain scores.
The wall clocks will be used together with invigilator announcements that remind the learners about time spent and time remaining before end of an exam paper.
Indeed, the announcements take care of the short-sighted and the visually impaired learners who may struggle to read the wall clocks.
Nonetheless, the exams agency should also remember that even eye-wears and wrist bands have been used as cameras in delicate assignments such as investigations and undercover reporting by journalists.
Well, if exam cheating is evolving fast due to technological disruptions, it is high time KNEC invested in the right tools to monitor cheats by securing examination centres.
The exam agency needs a technology that can send alerts and sound alarms in case there is a device or gadget whose content or configuration mirrors or comes close to exam wording. The technology should read, among other gadgets, phones, computers, cameras, pens, wristwatches, eye-wears, hearing aids, and even white canes that the visually-impaired use.
Already, there is technology that monitors plagiarism in research and project papers with considerable success even though such tools still allow candidates to preposterously alter text flow to fit the acceptable ratings.
To exam cheats at bay, such technology could be hand-held and remain in the custody of exam centre managers while being monitored by the multi-agency team, including security personnel, monitoring the tests.
If there is no such technology yet, it behoves the government to build one. Across the world, Kenya has created useful footprints in tech space to earn it the name Silicon Savannah.
Apart from ruling out watches, the KNEC boss said mobile phones will be switched off and kept away during the exam time. “All mobile phones in the examination centre must be switched off then kept in a lockable locker outside the examination room when the examination session is on,” he said in the communication.
Almost every year, a government multi-agency team works round the clock to come up with changes in the quest for delivering exam integrity, warning that cheating ruins not only lives of candidates but also the economy.
Over the years, the government has come up with controls to secure the national examinations, including KCSE, the Kenya Primary School Education Assessment (KPSEA) and Kenya Junior Secondary Education Assessment (KJSEA) tests.
Apart from the obvious identification of the exam field officers using badges, the government has limited access to schools in the third term by, for example, reducing interaction with learners.
Having said that, let all learners, schools, parents, teachers and exam officers know that wishing the candidates success in exams goes beyond good grades but covers integrity and security.
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