Primary school teachers will no longer invigilate Form 4 exam KCSE

Primary school teachers will no longer invigilate the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination, the Teachers Service Commission has announced.

Nancy Macharia, the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) chief executive says only secondary school teachers will be invigilators, centre managers and supervisors.

Speaking in Mombasa when the exam kicked off on November 6, Dr Macharia said 101,376 teachers will be managing the exams in the next one month.

This marks the end of an era since for many years primary school teachers have invigilated the exams while their secondary school counterparts were the supervisors.

Only “very few” primary school tutors will be involved, but “only in cases where the ratio of students exceed the available invigilators,” a teacher told ‘ A Plain’ on condition of anonymity.

This year, 903,260 candidates are sitting KCSE across the country and senior government officials will be supervising the opening of the containers holding the test papers across the country.

Going forward, primary school teachers will only be in charge of Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) and Kenya Primary Education Assessment (KPSEA) tests, the TSC boss said.

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KCPE done by Class Eight pupils and KPSEA, administered to Grade Six learners, ended last week on Wednesday.

Some 1,282,574 pupils sat for KPSEA while 1,415,325 did KCPE, ending the test’s 38-year run since 1985 under the 8-4-4 system.

The development is expected to give secondary school tutors a busy season since some of them will be examining the tests immediately they end before December.

While secondary school teachers have the minimum Bachelor’s degree, many of their colleagues in primary have since gone back to school and are holding degrees up to PhD.

However, some do not qualify to teach in secondary schools since the degree and postgraduate courses follow a career path, taking them to primary, secondary or early-childhood education institutions.

This year, about 3.5 million learners sat for the three national examinations whose results are expected to be released before Christmas Day.

editor@aplain.co.ke