Wamuzi News Ke
The marking process of the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) has started to be chaotic as the examiners quit their work and protested for the payment of allowances that were delayed, which caused the fear of a halt across the country, affecting the timely release of results.
This protest that commenced a few days back has already revealed the problems in the management of examination logistics and payments, which have drawn intense criticism from parents, schools, and education stakeholders.
The inside sources from the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) say that a huge number of teachers who were assigned to mark the KCSE scripts have stopped working, and their reasons are non-payment of the agreed-upon allowances and poor communication about when they would be paid.
The examiners, who are the majority and depend on these payments as their major supplementary income, are saying that they have been waiting for months without the responsible authorities giving them any clear commitments.
One of the senior examiners, who spoke on the condition that his name would not be revealed, said that the situation is “unprecedented and deeply frustrating,” and the delayed payments not only harm their livelihoods but also run the risk of the national exams losing credibility and being late. “We can’t keep on working under guesswork and waiting for the government to pay us our dues.
Students’ results and futures are at stake, but also our professional dignity,” the examiner made a statement. The disruption has made parents and educational administrators very concerned immediately, and some schools are even predicting that if the marking is prolonged, the university admission timelines and scholarship applications could be affected.
The stress is mostly among the last-year students, as their academic progress depends on the KCSE results being released on time. In its reply, the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) recognized the worries but connected the hold-ups to “administrative bottlenecks” and a requirement to authenticate all claims prior to payment.
A statement made public yesterday highlighted that there are still efforts being made to clear the backlog and asked teachers to go back to work while the processing of the assurances takes place.
