KNEC deregisters over 370,000 2019 KCPE, KCSE candidates over fake birth certificates

The Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) has canceled registration for 371,629 students scheduled to sit for the KCPE and KCSE exams this year.

According to a report by The Standard, a total of 1.78 million candidates had registered for both exams.

Knec claims that the canceled candidates may have been registered using falsified birth certificates.

KCSE candidates in an exam room Pulse Live Kenya

The examinations body claims that parents and school heads may have colluded to falsify the birth papers for registration purposes.

Malpractice most rampant in Kenyan Primary Schools

Knec CEO Mercy Korongo conveyed that most of the registration improprieties had taken place among primary schools.

Meru County had the highest number of deregistered students at 27,452 and Marsabit had the least cases at 45, 42 of them in primary schools.

"We have listed several cases where schools manipulated the birth registration data to register students.

Outgoing Education CS Amina Mohamed with Knec CEO Mercy Korongo during a past verification of exam materials Pulse Live Kenya

"Some just entered zeros while others entered some funny digits. We detected all theses and cancelled the registrations.

"We shall not process these candidates for the national examinations unless the correct data is entered because we use clean data," Korongo stated.

Outgoing Education CS Amina Mohamed also tabled a report of the same registration violations in Parliament last week.

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