Candidates to have unique personal identifiers as opposed to Index numbers
By Beth Nyaga
Thousands of candidates who will sit for next year’s national examinations will not be registered through Index numbers.
In what continues to be reforms aimed at sanitizing national examinations, President Uhuru Kenyatta has directed the Education ministry to cease the use of index numbers and instead ensure all registered examination candidates have unique personal identifiers (UPIs) in Student Registration Numbers.
President Kenyatta says this will be used to monitor their presence at all levels in the education system.
The Head of State says the students will use the personal identifiers throughout their presence at all levels, in the country’s education system.
The Head of State further directed the Education ministry to put in place effective plans to institutionalize the ongoing reforms in the sector to ensure sustainability and entrenchment saying there was no room for sliding back on the reforms.
In the reforms, the Ministry will speed up the implementation of the Education Information Management System planned to ensure that education data in the country is accurate, current and available to facilitate accurate decision making and deployment of resources.
Education CS Fred Matiang’i says the speeding up will eradicate malpractices in the marking and relaying of results.
The Ministry of Education and partner agencies including the Teachers Service Commission have also been tasked with ensuring the completion of a comprehensive digitization of all their records and programmes within the next one year, with the Education CS issuing a stern warning to teachers keen on compromising the reforms.
