Ministry to release KCPE results, confident on credibility 62

The Kenya National Examination Council (Knec) Chief Executive Officer Joseph Kivilu addresses the media at Jogoo House on October 23, 2015. Mr Kivilu said on December 29, 2015 that despite challenges witnessed during the administration of KCPE examination, the credibility of the test was not eroded. PHOTO | JEFF ANGOTE | NATION MEDIA GROUP 

In Summary

• The Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examination done by 937,467 candidates was also hit by irregularities, attributed to the candidate’s ill-preparedness due to the five-week strike.
• On Tuesday, Dr Kivilu maintained that there would be no ranking and that the mode of releasing the results would be similar to last year’s.
• The 2015 KCPE candidates sat their tests in 25,140 centres and were served by 1,070 distribution centres compared to 1,056 in 2014.

By OUMA WANZALA
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By MARYANNE GICOBI
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Candidates and parents will this morning be anxiously waiting for the release of Standard Eight examination results with uncertainty due to the October teachers’ strike.

The Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examination done by 937,467 candidates was also hit by irregularities, attributed to the candidate’s ill-preparedness due to the five-week strike.

This will be first batch of candidates to benefit from government’s payment of examination fees for learners in public schools.

The programme was aimed at ensuring that no learner failed to sit the tests for lack of money.

Speaking to the Nation on Tuesday, Kenya National Examinations Council Chief Executive Officer Joseph Kivilu said despite challenges witnessed during the administration of the examination, the credibility of the tests was not eroded.

“We will emphasise on the use of ICT to combat malpractices in future,” Dr Kivilu said.

He did not give details but promised to do so while releasing the results on Wednesday.

Dr Kivilu said candidates would only access results from the council’s website after January 4 as more time was needed to upload the information.

But candidates and their guardians can dial 22252 to access the results immediately they are released.

“We have upgraded the system and hope that there will be no delays as experienced before,” he said.

Last year, 1,702 pupils were involved irregularities, representing 0.19 per cent of 880,486 candidates.

Cheating took place in 93 out of 24,260 examination centres.

NO RANKING

In the 2014 KCPE examination, collusion constituted 99,9 per cent of the irregularities.

On Tuesday, Dr Kivilu maintained that there would be no ranking and that the mode of releasing the results would be similar to last year’s.

Ranking was banned by the immediate former Education Cabinet Secretary Jacob Kaimenyi.

He said it was creating unnecessary competition among schools and candidates, greatly contributing to malpractices.

The examiner will meet with Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i to brief him on the results.

They are expected to address several policy issues in which irregularities and Form One selection would take centre stage.

The 2015 KCPE candidates sat their tests in 25,140 centres and were served by 1,070 distribution centres compared to 1,056 in 2014.

The examination was administered in 5,959 private centres with 139,393 candidates while public centres were 19,176 and had 798,060 pupils.

The candidates sat for seven subjects: English objective, English composition, Kiswahili objective, Kiswahili Insha, mathematics, science, Kenya sign language objective and social studies and religious education.

After the release of the results, focus will shift to Form One selection, which will be done under new guidelines released last week by the Education Principal Secretary, Dr Bellio Kipsang.

In this year’s selection, five top candidates of either gender in every sub-county would be placed in national schools of their choice.

It won’t matter if they will be from private or public schools.

30 YEARS SINCE INCEPTION
Under the guidelines, 70 per cent of candidates from public schools would join extra-county schools while the remaining would be from private institutions.

The 103 national schools can admit 20,291 students, special needs schools 996 learners, extra counties (66,497), county (128,049), sub-county 434,048 while private schools have the capacity of 44,078 Form One students.

The anticipated capacity for every school would be computed on the basis of 45 learners per stream.

Wednesday will mark 30 years since the first release of KCPE examination results. The first was in 1985.

This was the tenth year of administering KCPE examination under the curriculum revised in 2005.

Transition to secondary schools in 2015 was 78 per cent or 687,000 pupils joining Form One. Another 200,000 missed chances in secondary schools.

Last year, 245,942 candidates scored between 201 and 250 marks, 144,838 had 151 to 200 while 49,100 scored between 101 and 150 marks.

In the same year, 6,051 candidates scored between 51 and 100 marks while 50 had between seven and 50 marks.

The number of KCPE candidates has been growing steadily from 839,7