The Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) has announced new exam and marking scheme features for the national examinations that are set to start this month. The guidelines come barely weeks before the KCSE examinations which will start from October 22 to November 22, 2024.

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.

“We have implemented several innovations that will be in place this year, these innovations include personalized question papers for the KCSE examinations where the candidates’ names will be pre-printed in the question papers,” said Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba.

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.

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.

Construction of Grade 9 classrooms to cost Sh. 18.8 billion

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.

For the KPSEA exam that shall take place from October 28 to November 1, 2024, security personnel will only be involved in the distribution and collection of exam materials.

This year, it is expected that a total of 965,501 candidates will sit for the KCSE exams across 10,755 examination centres. Another 1,313,913 candidates are expected to sit for the KPSEA examinations across 32,573 centres.