Human rights organization, Haki Africa has questioned the move by the Ministry of Education to de-register some candidates over the lack of birth certificates or anomalies in their documents.
This was after Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) Chief Executive Officer, Mercy Korogo confirmed that some examination centers used fake data to register students to avoid being stripped off their center status which was detected during a validation exercise by the agency.
In a statement to newsrooms, the lobby group has termed the decision to de-register over 400,000 candidates as illegal.
Haki Afrika rapid response officer, Shipeta Mathias, stated that the decision is unconstitutional and that it will deny the students their right to education.He instead urged the Ministry to find amicable ways of handling the matter rather than taking the punitive action.
”It’s unfair to deny a student who has prepared for eight years their right to do their exams. This can contribute to marginalization especially in rural areas where getting the birth certificate is a hard task,” reads part the statement.
According to data showed, KNEC subsequently canceled the registration of 342,916 KCPE candidates and 28,713 in secondary schools.
This means that only 746,755 candidates have been registered to sit the KCPE examinations while only 670,222 candidates can sit the KCSE examinations.
