Kenya’s shift towards digital exams is expected to make assessments more efficient, improve administration, and simplify the process of evaluating students.
However, what happens when the technology meant to make examinations easier becomes another obstacle for the very students it is supposed to serve?
According to The Standard, the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) now runs the Diploma in Primary Teacher Education, the Diploma in Early Childhood Teacher Education, the Diploma in Secondary Teacher Education, and the upgrade diplomas entirely online, with scripts submitted through its portal for marking.
KNEC chief executive David Njengere says the change is part of efforts to modernize national assessments and align teacher training with competency-based learning.
The council had already urged school principals in a 2024 circular to prepare their ICT infrastructure for school-based and final assessments through its e-assessment portal.
A Reported Collapse in Kigari
That test came under strain on 4 November, when trainees at St. Mark’s Teachers College, Kigari, were sitting their Christian Religious Education paper in the DTE PP&P summative assessment.
Arena reports that candidates lost access to the system, preventing some from finishing their exams, and that protests followed, leading to police deployment to prevent the situation from escalating.
Those details still need confirmation through KNEC’s incident logs, the college’s technical report, and candidate statements.
What is already on record is how the paper was set up. KNEC’s timetable and instructions schedule the paper for 1 PM to 4 PM on the TECBA e-assessment system, allow “no extra time,” and tell trainees to ensure their devices are charged and connected to the internet.
The instructions outline the actions candidates must take, but they do not clearly specify, in a way that students can understand, the consequences of a failure in the platform or the college’s infrastructure.
KNEC’s 2024 e-assessment rules put much of the technical load on institutions, requiring licensed software on devices and a dedicated offline server able to run assessments without relying on the internet, so a fault can begin at several points in a chain the candidate does not control.
Who Pays When the System Fails
For a student, an interrupted paper can mean lost time, a delayed graduation, and a postponed start in a teaching job, followed by fees if the result ends in a resit.
Registration for the January to February 2027 supplementary sitting costs KES 7,200 per trainee, with another KES 5,000 for a practicum referral.
The rules for irregularities raise the stakes further, because 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.
Efficiency for Whom?
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.
