Detectives are probing the circumstances under which the keys to the container for the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations went missing.
Director of Education Harrison Muriuki confirmed that officials from the Directorate of Criminal Investigation are investigating how a senior official lost the key to an exam container, delaying the distribution of KCSE papers to 23 schools.
Ainakboi’s deputy county commissioner was guarding the key to the container, but the education officer was not found in the morning. The examination was not handed over to the concerned authorities till 6 am.
The exam center manager, education and security officials who were at the exam collection center in Kapsoya were forced to wait as the officials organized how the container would be opened.
Education officers had to take the examination by breaking the container. DCI is probing whether the lock was tampered with.
“We forcefully opened the lock after getting permission from the Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC). Papers were distributed in schools at 6.30 am. The DCI took the lock as we waited for its replacement. Police are managing the container at this time,” said Director of Education Harrison Muriuki.
National exams are stored in containers that are opened on the morning of the specific papers the candidates sit. The keys to each container are usually in the custody of the area’s Deputy County Director of Education and the Deputy County Deputy Commissioner.
It is mandatory for the education officers to be present during the inauguration of the containers which are under 24-hour surveillance.
The 2021 KCSE exam began on Monday amid isolated cases of examination malpractice at at least 6 centers across the country.
Police in Matayos, Busia County, were harassed by George Barasa, a 26-year-old man who attempted to sit an English paper on behalf of his father, Josephat Barasa, 42, at Our Lady of Mercy Girls’ Secondary School.
On Tuesday, a police officer overseeing an examination center was arrested after he fled. The officer, a police constable, went missing from his station at Koiban Secondary School at around 2.00 pm for conducting illegal raids in the Kimangor area of Nandi County.
The officer posted at the Kamungei police post had allegedly gone to a house a kilometer away to carry out an operation to target illicit liquor makers.
