Exam cheating: TSC will use fingerprints to nail rogue teachers

The government will launch a biometric system that will store details such as fingerprints of all teachers in public schools countrywide. 

This was announced by Teachers Service Commission (TSC) boss, Ms Nancy Macharia, on Monday during the unveiling of Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) exam results. 

The move, Ms Macharia said, will help the TSC detect, identify and punish suspects of exam fraud, while also protecting innocent teachers whose gadgets may be used to commit such irregularities.

Fingerprint identification is expected to help the government accurately identify culprits who tamper with sealed exam materials when they are released.

"We are at the tail end of finalising our negotiations with the office of the Data Commissioner on the rollout of the biometric data of all teachers," Ms Macharia said. 

This comes as it emerged that some teachers had taken screenshots of exam papers as soon as they opened the exam papers.

"In one case, it was alleged that a school principal took screenshots of exam questions, disseminated and even went ahead to post them on her Whatsapp profile...In yet another case, a senior teacher's cell phone containing screenshots of questions of a paper was recovered as the phone was being transported to a candidate who was sitting the examination at a hospital," she said.

"We have also been notified of a man who posed as an examiner and who accessed an exam centre. He has since been found guilty by court and jailed," she added, noting that he was a registered teacher though not a TSC employee.