The 2024 edition of the KCSE was completed over a month ago, last year, on Friday, November 22, and it has already been stated that the results will be announced in the second week of this new year, 2025. But do you know how much the invigilators were paid?
It’s a subject of concern, of course, especially since the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) is an examination offered after a four-year cycle of secondary schooling, and almost everyone has passed through that stage—at least, everyone who has completed basic education in Kenya.
KCSE is normally administered by the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC), a government body established to offer examinations and award certificates to successful school and post-school candidates, operating as per the Fourth Schedule of the Constitution of Kenya, 2010.
> How KCSE 2024 Will Be Graded
From the start of the recently concluded KCSE exams, which began in January and continued through July of the previous year for candidates undertaking project-based subjects like Art and Design, Agriculture, and Woodwork, to the commencement of the general exams for common subjects such as Mathematics, English, and Chemistry on Monday, November 4, KNEC was responsible for overseeing the entire process. This included managing the registration of 965,501 students across 10,755 centres.
This responsibility also extended to paying all the KCSE invigilators, whose main responsibility, according to KNEC, was picking up the exam materials prior to the examination, distributing the materials to the candidates, supervising them for the duration of the scheduled time and returning all exam materials to the designated exams officer at the end of each allocated time.
Recruited based on the requirement that they are trained, serving secondary school teachers with qualifications of a Diploma in Education or higher and employed by the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), Business Today has learned that the invigilators were paid a meagre Ksh510 per day, despite the government paying more than Ksh5,000 for each institutional candidate to sit the exams.
According to approved rates and allowances seen by BT, their bosses, KCSE supervisors, were paid Ksh680 per day, centre managers received Ksh550 per day, and drivers were paid just Ksh455 per day.
Perhaps KNEC was overwhelmed when determining the salaries for each person involved in administering the exam because even police officers responsible for securing the examination materials and students were being paid Ksh470 daily. Two officers were stationed at each examination centre, except for centres with over 250 candidates, where a third officer was assigned.
Nonetheless, the discrepancy in remuneration has raised questions about the fairness and prioritisation of resources when it comes to the administration of these critical national examinations.
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