War against examination cheating is just a tip of the ice-berg of the corruption suffocating the education sector.
Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiangi’s disbanding of the board of Directors of the Kenya National Examination Council and the dismissal of that board’s Chief Executive Officer and initiation of a raft of investigatory measures to arraign in court those that were culpable of the rampant cheating in the 2015 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) and Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education(KCSE) is a breathe of relief to the ordinary Kenyan who continues to be suffocated with the poisonous air of corruption and impunity.
As they say it is better late than never. Kenya was on the way as it were of legitimizing, making examination cheating as the new shortcut to achieving academic credentials right from Primary school, Secondary school to University instead of genuine, hard earned achievement of academic excellence recognized worldwide. And in a dispensation where academic achievements are acquired through cheating only the rich will have the means to buy their way to academics achievements.
The corruption virus that Kenyans have perfected as a shortcut to making wealth was being entrenched in our National Examinations body. The evidence of that corruption was over two years ago exposed in the now infamous “Chicken Gate” scandal all the way in the United Kingdom in a criminal trial of executives of the British Company Smith and Ousman for paying bribes to the officials at the then Interim Independent Electoral Commission (IIEC) and the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) to secure printing contracts.
The United Kingdom Criminal Court in February 2015 sentenced to jail those found guilty and they are serving sentence. It is one year on and Kenya is now trying to scramble to punish the criminality that has continued to take root at the Kenya National Examinations Council. That Council despite the Chicken Gate scandal that implicated its former chief Executive Mr. Wasanga had the audacity in 2015 to preside over the most notorious exam cheating that the country had ever witnessed since independence with about 5000 students’ results being cancelled and thousands others escaping with the cheating undetected.
It is hoped that Dr. Fred Matiangi’s promise to clean up the exam cheating filth that has pervaded the KNEC and schools will be thorough and complete and be a lesson to all other education institutions more so those delivering tertiary education.
The virus of cheating, corruption in Kenya’s schools is worrying for it is those institutions that are supposed to be the seedbed of Kenya nurturing a new generation that is averse to corruption and cheating that is presently Kenya’s pastime in public service and the private sector and the body of politics of the Nation.
The war against corruption is a work in progress given corruption is an octopus, is a cancer that keeps mutating. The cabinet secretary has his work cut out to root out the corruption in the education sector that is denying the children of Kenya their constitutional right to education of integrity for all.