The Ministry of Education on Thursday unveiled plans to halt the use of Short Message Service (SMS) for candidates to access national examination results.
Appearing before the National Assembly Education Committee on Thursday, December 7, Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu said the move follows a series of errors witnessed in the recently released Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) exam results.
The Ministry noted that the SMS service provider contracted by the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) was to blame for the misalignment of marks and grades, adding that the results on the KNEC portal were accurate.
Notably, Kiswahili marks were erroneously presented as marks for Kenya Sign Language. This also affected English, Kiswahili, and Social Studies, thus affecting the overall grading.
Messy KCPE results, missing marks, wrongly graded subjects
“Moving forward, when we release the KCSE examinations, we will not be able to make use of the same service provider,” he stated.
The Ministry said it will instead put in place a more effective system that will be free of charge.
“I am already engaging ICT we see whether we can be able to develop a website that members of the public can be able to access free of charge. When we release our KCSE anytime soon,” Machogu said.
After the release of the results, the ministry usually gives a number where candidates and their guardians send the index number of the candidate and get results at a cost of Sh25 for every SMS.