Busia Senator Okiya Omtatah has challenged the Kenya National Examinations Council over its handling of the 2025 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education results.
On January 13—four days after the results were released—Omtatah issued a stringent seven-day ultimatum to the examination body, based on what he termed a “fundamental injustice” in the grading of Kenya Sign Language.
The senator’s allegation is a contradictory grading policy.
For hearing-impaired candidates, KSL was rightly treated as a compulsory language paper, forming a crucial part of their final aggregate score.
However, for hearing students, their KSL marks were reportedly excluded from the calculation of their overall mean grade.
Hearing students were encouraged to take the subject as a technical skill under the government’s inclusive education policy.
This discrepancy, Omtatah argues, not only devalued the subject but also placed hearing candidates at an automatic disadvantage against their peers, whose technical subjects like Business Studies or Computer Studies contributed directly to their final scores.
“This is discriminatory and punishes students for embracing a national language,” stated Omtatah in his demand letter to Knec.
He called for a full recall and recomputation of the results for all affected candidates, asserting that their grades must be recalculated with KSL integrated into their aggregate.
The senator gave the examining body a seven-day ultimatum to provide comprehensive data on the affected candidates and to rectify the anomaly.
Omtatah warned that failure to comply will result in a formal petition being filed at the High Court, seeking judicial orders to compel fair grading.
A recalculation could alter university placement outcomes for thousands of students who applied for courses in the 2025/2026 cycle.
He also called for an immediate suspension of the 2026 KCSE exam registration until a conclusive solution is reached.
Knec was yet to issue a public response, even as the deadline lapsed yesterday.
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