Kenya students protest disrupted digital exam glitch

The move by Kenya to introduce digital exams for national assessments has encountered a significant obstacle after a technical failure disrupted testing at St. Mark’s Teachers College, Kigari. This incident has sparked concerns over the dependability and fairness of the new online assessment system.

The Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) now conducts four teacher education diplomas entirely through its digital platform, including the Diploma in Primary Teacher Education and the Diploma in Secondary Teacher Education. This transition, overseen by KNEC CEO David Njengere, seeks to update assessment methods and align education with competency-based learning standards. Schools received directives in a 2024 circular to ensure their information and communication technology infrastructure was prepared for digital exams via the e-assessment portal.

On November 4, trainees at Kigari College experienced a system outage during their Christian Religious Education exam, which was part of the DTE PP&P summative assessment. Witness accounts describe protests and a police presence to maintain order, though official records and technical evaluations have yet to confirm these details. The exam was scheduled from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM with no additional time allowed, requiring fully charged devices and stable internet connections.

KNEC’s guidelines stress the importance of device readiness but do not specify consequences for platform failures. The 2024 e-assessment rules assign technical responsibility to institutions, requiring licensed software and offline server backups.

For students, an interrupted exam carries financial and academic consequences. A failed attempt may incur a KES 7,200 resit fee, along with a KES 5,000 charge for practicum referrals. KNEC’s published instructions allow an irregularity in one paper to cancel results for the whole subject and a widespread one to cancel results for a center.

Those provisions protect the credibility of the exams, though they do not visibly explain how the council separates cheating from a dropped connection, a lockout, or an incomplete submission caused by the platform.

Candidates have also raised concerns about a reported three-attempt logout limit on the Safe Exam Browser, which cannot be treated as fact without an audit but which would mean the software is shaping the result if an accidental logout does use up attempts.

Digital transformation in education should not be measured simply by how quickly an examination can be administered or how easily results can be processed.

It should also consider whether the systems are reliable, whether candidates have equal opportunities to complete assessments, and whether there are safeguards when technology fails.

The immediate question is how KNEC will address the affected candidates at Kigari. A fair resolution would require an examination of system logs, saved responses, authentication records, and the college’s technical reports before determining whether a reassessment is necessary.

More broadly, the incident provides a reason to examine whether Kenya’s education assessment infrastructure is delivering the efficiency promised by digitization or simply shifting operational risks and costs onto students.