Education Principal Secretary Belio Kipsang on Wednesday said that the marking of the 2023 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) Examination was foolproof.

Speaking while defending results before the National Assembly Education Committee, he pointed out that the marking of the exams was of the highest standards.

“The marking includes a period of coordination of the marking schemes and quality assurance by the senior examiners where they randomly sample what has been marked by each examiner and remark to ensure the scoring does not deviate from the marking scheme,” the PS stated.

The 2023 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) mistakes, according to the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC), were only related to the SMS platform and were the fault of the provider.

According to a study from KNEC, setup problems with the interface used to retrieve the results data from the database of the service offered by mobile network operators were the reason for the truncation and misalignments.

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“KNEC verified the query and noted that the challenge was only affecting the results accessed through the SMS services. The SMS service provider identified the issues of results data truncation and encoding that affected accurate and complete representation of the characters in the SMS text,” the report from KNEC said.

The examination body says the issues were rectified in about 10 minutes, and the results sent through SMS after the correction indicated the correct grade and in the expected format.

Meanwhile, KNEC says it is keen to ensure that all disputes arising from the examinations are resolved within the stipulated 30 days.

There have been numerous issues raised around the exams, but KNEC says the entire process was beyond reproach, and the few issues that have arisen will be dealt with in utmost dignity and fairness.

KNEC said that the processing of the 2023 KCPE took the longest number of days since 2016, when the Ministry of Education introduced reforms in national examinations. The process took 22 days.