Teachers under the Kenya Union of Post-Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET) are demanding a huge pay increase to invigilate and supervise the upcoming national examinations.
KUPPET is demanding that teachers who will oversee the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations get a salary increase of over Sh. 2,500 per day.
The teachers’ union has asked the Ministry of Education to pay invigilators Sh. 3,000 per day up from the current Sh. 400 per day. KUPPET also wants the ministry to pay supervisors Sh. 3,500 per day up from 450. The union has also asked that secondary school principals who act as examination centre managers be paid Sh. 4,500 up from the daily pay of Sh. 500 that they currently receive.
KUPPET has already fired a fiery demand letter to the Cabinet Secretary for Education Julius Ogamba. with the higher pay demands for KCSE invigilators, supervisors and centre managers. However, according to KUPPET secretary-general Akello Misori, the union is yet to received a response from the government.
“There has been no response from the government. They have not called us to discuss allowances. They have only called teachers for briefing. We feel that they are joking,” said Misori.
He added that the teachers might go beyond boycotting the exams if their demands are not met. “We are not asking for too much. We will respond in a big way and the two weeks remaining [to the start of the exams] are enough. We are not limited to a boycott; we will do more,” said Misori.
This year, it is expected that a total of 965,501 candidates will sit for the KCSE exams across 10,755 examination centres. The KCSE examinations which will start from October 22 to November 22, 2024.
Earlier this month, the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) has announced new exam and marking scheme features for the national examinations.
According to the guidelines issued by KNEC, examination papers will be personalized to ensure that papers are unique to a candidate. Each candidate’s details shall be contained in a pre-printed format.
The first page of the 2024 KCSE exams will have the pre-printed details of all candidates of a particular examination centre. The front page of the paper will have two sections namely the upper part and the lower part.
KNEC announces new unique 2024 KCSE, KPSEA exam papers, answer scripts
The answer scripts shall be anonymized during marking in a bid to enhance fairness in grading candidates. As a result, examiners will not be able to identify the owner of the script as it the script will only contain a signature.
During the examinations, centre managers, invigilators and candidates will not be allowed to use mobile phones. There shall also be a rotation of supervisors every week, with supervisors only allowed to work in one centre per week. At the same time, supervisors and invigilators will be required to declare any affiliations with the examination centres where they will be assigned to avoid conflict of interest.
