All the Latest Education News Today

29 Mobile Phones Confiscated At School In Garissa As KCSE Exams Kick Off

Education officials and security officers on Friday confiscated 29 mobile phones in one school in Dadaab, Garissa County, as the 2022 KCSE examinations kicked off.

This is according to Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) CEO Dr. David Nyeng’ere who said detectives from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) are looking into the matter, adding that those found culpable will be dealt with.

He attributed the case to the failure of invigilators to do proper frisking since the school, whose name has since been withheld, is a day school.

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Senior Official Arrested Over Attempted Rigging Of KCPE Exam

A KCPE examination official is behind bars after he was arrested over an attempt to leak the just concluded national examinations in Turkana County.
Confirming the incident on Friday, Rift Valley Regional Commissioner Mohammed Maalim said the official, a Centre manager, was nabbed after trying to take pictures of the examination papers and sharing them with a candidate in Nairobi.

“In 8,343 centres it was only one centre where a manager attempted to take a picture of the English paper and was sending it to a candidate in Nairobi. We managed to move with speed and arrest the Centre manager who is currently held by DCI officers,” he said.

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208 boys sodomised, 2,120 girls raped in Nairobi – research

A report by the Kenya Health Information system has revealed a worrying rise in cases of defilement in Nairobi county.

Data from the Kenya Health Information system show that 208 boys of age 17 and below were sodomised in Nairobi county between the months of January and September while 2,120 girls were raped.

The same report showed that 121 boys under the age of 11 years were sodomised while 552 girls below the age of 11 were also defiled between January and September.

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Private universities threaten to stop admitting State-backed students over cash woes

Private universities have threatened to stop admitting government-sponsored students in the wake of under-funding from the Treasury that has deepened cash flow hitches in the institutions.

Vice-chancellors of the private universities say that the current funding formula has unfairly cut the amount of money the institutions get for every government-funded student, forcing them to incur extra costs compared to their public counterparts.

The funding gap for government-sponsored students in private universities was Sh24.38 billion in the year ended June 2021 and is expected to widen as new students enrol in September.

The government pays an average of Sh44,000 per year for every State-sponsored student in the private universities compared to the Sh125,000 offered in public universities.

Their withdrawal will derail the State-backed plan introduced in 2016 to address congestion in public institutions of higher learning such as the University of Nairobi.