By Ruth Mainye
Five students failed to turn up for the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examination that began yesterday, this is according to Nandi East Deputy County Commissioner (DCC) Leonard Mgute.
Confirming the incident at the close of business for day one, Mgute noted that the parents of the five candidates had relocated from Nandi to various parts of the country and that investigations were underway to determine why the candidates could not turn up to sit for their KCPE exams.
“On Monday we recorded five absenteeism cases in Nandi Hills Township Primary School in the KCPE category. Upon preliminary investigation we found out that their parents had relocated from Nandi, however, we are still investigating why the candidates did not turn up for their national examinations,” explained DCC Mgute.
He also noted that three KCPE candidates who were admitted at the Nandi Hills Sub-County Hospital due to sickness were forced to write their papers in the ward and that security had been provided to ensure that they could write their exams smoothly.
The administrator further noted that challenges had been experienced while transporting examinations to various centers due to poor roads, which had become impassable as a result of heavy rains on Sunday evening.
He said that the papers had been delivered late, resulting in the late commencement of the examinations, but that arrangements had been made to start the transportation of the remaining papers early enough to ensure that candidates could start writing them at the stipulated time.
In terms of security, DCC Mgute assured that the necessary security had been provided for the exercise to run smoothly, with each examination centre being allocated two security officers.
According to the DCC, Nandi East sub-County has a total of 106 KCPE centres with a total of 4,248 candidates comprising 2,173 boys and 2,075 girls, whereas in the KPSEA examination category, there are 107 centres with a total of 3,526 candidates comprising 1,835 boys and 1,691 girls.
In addition, five private candidates are sitting for the KCPE examination at Nandi Hills Township Primary School, of whom two are men and three are women.