Exam cheating in this year examinations was so open. People were joking on twitter with various ways they would have use the exam papers at their disposal. Some said that they would never have used them. I am one of those people who would not have used them. The reason being I am a bad liar, I am very skeptical about solutions coming to me in a silver platter and I would probably not have known about it until after the exams were over.
I do not like this one bit because how then will we gauge the smartest student if everyone has a cheat sheet with them. I almost died laughing when I heard the news say that these exams are procured by parents, teachers and the students themselves. When I was doing my exams all my parents did was send me success cards and pray the rosary with me in the petitions. You have to be a very weird parent if you teach your children to go for the low hanging fruit and you even serve them this fruit.
We are laughing now until this person who got an A because he had almost all papers with him before the exams becomes your doctor. They probably won’t be because they would probably not be able to handle the pressure of medical school. They will of course be the few who will fake it till they make it. They will carry that same behavior all through campus, find people to do their proposals, assignments and copy in their CATs and at the end of the day become doctors or engineers.
We cannot redo the exams because the people involved are still the same. The parents, teachers, students and KNEC officials are still the same. I remember in my year we did almost 80% emergency papers. You are waiting for a green math paper and a white one is placed on your desk. We did not know why we were doing emergency papers or if they just made a million papers and randomly chose which one to give us. They were vigilant back then.
This menace in my opinion is because of the teachers strike. For there to be supply there has to be demand. The demand this time was there because students were at home keeping up with househelps of Kawangware, keeping up with the Kardashians and forgot to study. The teachers were on strike and they thought the exams will be pushed forward to no avail. The teachers want their schools to pass and the parents want their children to become what they have dreamt for them. This accounted for the high demand and the suppliers are always ready to make money off the desperate, unprepared students.
We need put very stringent measures against cheating. So stringent that a person will think thrice before selling, using or circulating cheating exam papers. Investigations should be done starting with the KNEC offices and work their way down because a student won’t get the paper if the people making the papers did not distribute them.
