WATCH: Headteacher breaks down after school posts poor results in KCPE
The headteacher at Moi DEB Primary School in Bungoma County was at pains to explain the poor performance of Kenya Certificate of Primary Education candidates after the results were announced on Wednesday.
Speaking to the media shortly after the results were announced, the headteacher, Mr Kelvin Wanyama, claimed that candidates in his school had been performing well in the examinations leading up to the national examination and that teachers and parents had been confident of their students emerging among the top performers in the country.
As he attempted to explain and understand what happened, the headteacher occasionally broke down as he struggled to make his point.
“We could have been celebrating but it has become a different day that we can’t even explain. We waited for our student’s results. You as parents, we as teachers know, and our students know; this year we knew we would produce top students and all of them knew that stop student could be him or her,” he said.
“In the past months, we did all the exams, from the sub-County to Mock, our students have been leading. We did exams with several other schools and there was none that our students weren’t among the top three performers,” he explained further.
“Our students among the top 100 were the ones leading the pack. It was something everyone saw. It’s not that we were waiting for results that would surprise us. That maybe a student would get 400 marks that he has never gotten, no, but today, as the head teacher, I have been surprised,” he said.
The headteacher further said the school sat down with all its candidates and sent for the results and they found that their top performer had 365 marks. He also lamented that his child scored 334 marks.
“I have many questions. No, it cannot be that our children have been studying, working hard and it gets to this point that you can’t even compare our results to other schools. That is why we called the Sub-County Director. These are not the results of this school,” he said.
His position was supported by parents and teachers at the school who claimed the Kenya National Examination Council’s systems may have been hacked to disadvantage them or politics was at play to deny their students marks.
The school is now demanding that the “real results” of their candidate be released because it appears ttheir school’s performance has been tampered with to the advantage of other schools in the area.