Precious Blood Girls tops list

Precious Blood School, Riruta, may have attained the highest mean score nationally in the 2008 Form Four examinations, according to rankings calculated by the Nation.

The school had a mean score of 10.9655, followed by Starehe Boys Centre with 10.75. In third place was Alliance Boys with 10.556.

The mean scores in the just-released Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) results were far below the 2007 figures where the top school, Mang’u High, scored 11.2634.

According to our tabulation, the other top performing schools were Mang’u at position four with a mean score of 10.2350, Kenya High (10.200), Moi Girls Eldoret with 10.1400, Bahati Girls (10.1829) and Maseno School at 10.1.

Also recording best mean scores were Strathmore (9.9870), Nairobi School (9.9728), Friends School Kamusinga (9.9672), Alliance Girls (9.965), Molo Academy (9.900), Pangani Girls (9.880), Precious Blood Kilungu (9.867), Kanga (9.760), Lugulu Girls (9.664), Mary Mount Molo (9.600), Nyeri (9.500), Moi High School Kabarak (9.400) and Kagumo (9.3).

This data was collated from interviews conducted in schools across the country. The Kenya National Examinations Council stopped ranking schools in 2009, so it was not possible to establish a conclusive report on the performance of all the schools.

In 2008, Mang’u led the pack with a mean score of 11.2634, followed by Starehe (11.0943) and Precious Blood Riruta (11.0689). As announced by Education Minister Sam Ongeri when releasing the results on Tuesday, there was marked decline in the overall performance of the candidates.

Mean score

The top four schools in 2007 each had a mean score higher than 11, whereas the best in 2008 was 10.9655. Prof Ongeri attributed the decline to the post-election violence in early 2008 and school riots in the second term.

Out of the 305,015 candidates who sat the KCSE exams in 2008, only 72,649 candidates scored a mean grade of C+ and above, the minimum qualification mark for admission to public universities.

The number of those who scored A dropped from 1,157 in 2007 to 817 last year. Conversely, those at the tail end — grades D to E — ballooned to 102,759 compared to 69,166 the year before.

An analysis of the performance by province revealed the following: In Western Province, Friends Kamusinga posted the best performance with a mean score of 9.9672, followed by Lugulu with 9.664 and Booker Academy, Mumias, with 9.2.

In Rift Valley, the best performers were Moi Girls Eldoret (10.140), followed by Kapsabet Boys (9.542). Nyanza’s torch bearer was Maseno School,