The Kenya National Association of Parents has shown discontent with the Examination Council over how they conduct the marking of the examinations.

The Secretary General KNAP Mr. Musau Ndunda said that 65%of students every year fail in the national examination and many of whom come to the KNAP's offices questioning the results while others demand for re-marking.

However, the strict rules that are imposed by the KNEC make the candidates lose hope in life.

“It's quite unfortunate that our KCPE and KCSE candidates have for many years been denied the opportunity to access their examination papers said Ndunda.

KNAP is now appealing through the Minister for Education Professor Sam Ongeri to direct KNEC to comply with sec 35 of the new constitution which allows every citizen the right to access information held by the government.

The association wants examination papers released to students together with the results of the national examinations.

This they argued will enable the candidates and their parents to confirm and accept results as issued by the examination body.

The Association further took issue with the number of examinable subjects asking the Ministry to reduce the number of subjects from 7 to 3 saying children should not be forced to do subjects that they are not good at.

The population census report released last week showed   that there are 4 million school going children who cannot attend school despite the introduction of the free primary education seven years ago.

"we strongly believe that when the government came up with the FPE program  there are several  challenges  that were never addressed  such as the  feeding of the  children, uniforms, the home environment, incentive  to the poor household among others” Ndunda added.

They also urged the government to come up with a legislation controlling the number of children that a person should have and also to amend the current education act by coming up with an imprisonment sentence of up to 1year to any parent who does not take his or her child to school.

9 billion shillings has been released to secondary students to sort out the problems facing the schools. They recommended the government to change their financing strategy by increasing funding to day schools from the current 10,265 per student to ksh 15,000.This will improve the standards of the day schools and discourage poor parents from taking their children to expensive boarding schools.

Fridah Too &Wesley Kitur.