Slow, unresponsive Knec portal frustrates candidates expecting KCSE results
Kenya National Examinations Council CEO David Njengere.
“The service is unavailable.”
That was the message confronting some users as they tried to access results for the 2024 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations on the dedicated portal on January 9.
Either that or a blank page that took ages to load, presenting a plain white platform that did little to calm the anxiety of those who wanted to access their scores from the Kenya National Examinations Council (Knec) website.
As many as two hours after the results were officially released by Education Cabinet Secretary Migos Ogamba, who announced the address through which candidates could access their grades, going through was a tall order.
Frustrated Kenyans took to social media to complain, more so under Knec’s post on X explaining how to access the results.
“What really works in my country?” posted social media user, Signal.
“…nilikuwa mjinga kuamini kuna kitu inafanya kazi kwa hii serikali (I was naive to think anything works in this government,” posted Remy.
“Can’t you broaden the pathway or where is the problem?” posed Mwita. “You clearly know (that) today, of all days, people are going to be a lot.”
“Why do you want the candidates to be depressed?” Nyangeri posted.
“Someone didn’t implement a load balancer. Such a rookie mistake not to anticipate traffic for such a platform,” wrote Nelson.
Nehemiah lamented: “Servers that can’t even handle 10 requests without absolutely crashing. Everyone in this government is competing to fail.”
Knec dumped the previously popular method of checking results via SMS in 2023. It involved sending the candidate’s index number to a short code, at a fee, after which the results would be sent via SMS.
The departure from the SMS system followed the fiasco in which the 2023 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examination results received via SMS were in some cases different from those on the Knec portal.
There were also complaints about lengthy delays in receiving the result messages. Moreover, many candidates bemoaned the confusion in the KCPE grading system. In some cases, candidates had results under Kenyan Sign Language, a subject they had not taken.
Knec CEO David Njengere said then: “There were also cases where the grades in Science and Social Studies and Religious Education were truncated incorrectly and were missing the plus (+) and minus (-) signs as expected. The errors affected only the SMS results due to configuration issues.”
He then noted that the results were accurate in the Knec portal.
The confusion led to many stakeholders, including teachers’ unions and the Council of Governors, demanding an audit of the results.
In the subsequent release of exam results, which was in January 2024, Knec ditched the SMS system, with the then Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu only announcing Knec’s online portal as the channel for receiving results.
That, however, was also marred by delays in obtaining results.
