It is true that the welfare of a nation cannot be greater than the education of its people. Since the advent of western education in Africa, examination has been the major instrument used for the evaluation, testing and measuring the quality and quantity of knowledge and skills accumulated by individual learners at the end of a teaching process or upon successful completion of a given level of education cycle.

One of the indicators of a good system of education therefore — since education has been adopted as an instrument for national development — is the quality of people produced in terms of relevant competences; knowledge, skills and performance needed for social, political and economic development of the nation’s physical and human resources. The exercise of measuring the competence levels shows that the role of an invigilator in enhancing quality education is pivotal.

When it especially comes to national examinations, each education system endeavours to establish policies that guide the proceedings of the exercise for effective and efficient outcome. However, at times even though these guidelines have been established on paper, adequate awareness about the comprehensive procedures among key stakeholders is questionable.

It should be noted that invigilator’s indolence about their  job descriptions, jeopardises the quality of an entire education system. Given the nature of these examinations, all education stakeholders; students, teachers, parents, politicians and entire community, sometimes even the hired invigilators, become candidates who, in case of any lapses in the invigilation and supervision process, they would exploit it for examination malpractice tendencies.

Certification bodies, such as REB endeavour, in preparation for national examinations, procure the necessary materials to be used, convene meetings; workshops and conferences for stakeholders; hire necessary manpower, provide security and welfare etc, to enhance the required standards so as to achieve the national education goal.

However, sometimes invigilators tend to abuse such efforts by defying the stipulated procedures; appearing to the examination centres late, reading newspapers or books during examination session, facebooking; whatsaping, doing their private assignments, receiving calls, receiving bribes to allow malpractice, abandoning exam room for conversations with peers, drinking/eating in examination hall when an exam is on, vexing candidates through repulsive remarks, and dozing in the session extra.

This may tempt candidates to get involved in malpractices. Examination malpractice tendencies include copying or reading from neighbouring candidates’ scripts or from other unauthorised sources such as body parts (palms, hands, thighs, nails and the lower back), exchange of answer booklets and notes either verbally or written, importing already written examination booklets with pre-responses, impersonation, writing under the shoe carpets, writing small notes; inside the ball pens, others write in the labels of bottles of water. In some cases, students access examination papers in advance, while others use electronic gadgets such as mobile phones to cheat. Such occurrences culminate into a great threat to the validity and reliability of any examination and consequently to the authenticity and recognition of certificate issued which eventually undermines the goal of education of the country.

Certification bodies should ensure adequate sensitisation of invigilators on relevant examination policies, roles and responsibilities. Adequate storage facilities should be provided. Electronic devices should be used to check students before entering examination halls and, if possible, CCTV gadgets  employed especially in the main examination centres and hire well experienced professionals (scouts) to conduct abrupt visits to examination centres to check if exams procedures are well operationalised. Examination security criteria should be ensured and guarantee the welfare of invigilators.

The writer is the research coordinator School of Education

Mt. Kenya University-Kigali