KCSE: Year of the boys

Alliance High School had an excellent performance in last year’s Form Four examination results, taking a fifth of the top 100 positions nationally.
It was a generally bad year for the girls without a single one on the top 10 list.

The national champion was Mang’u High School’s David Ndung’u Gathuku, who scored a performance index of 87.26 based on seven examinable subjects.

Gathuku has a history of good performance in national exams. He was in the limelight again in the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) in 2005 when he was ranked 16th countrywide with 451 marks out of 500.

Alliance High School had 19 candidates in the top 100, compared to perennial top performer Starehe Boys Centre, which had 13.

Starehe was in the second position nationally in terms of the number of candidates in the top 100.

Top private schools Strathmore, Kianda, Sunshine, Kabarak and Light Academy did not have any candidate in the top 50 nationally.

The Kenya National Examinations Council does not rank schools in terms of their performance, giving only the candidates’ scores. School rankings based on the number of candidates from an institution in the top categories gives a general idea of how such an institution did in the exams but is not an accurate measure of overall performance.

Releasing the results at the Kenya Institute of Education on Tuesday, Education minister Sam Ongeri also announced the top performers in each subject, again showing Alliance High leading nationally in English, Kiswahili and chemistry.

Rift Valley’s Maasai Girls, led in maths and biology.

Girls took only a quarter, or 27 positions, in the top 100, leaving boys to walk away with the lion’s share of 73.

Starehe Boys had only one candidate in the top 10 list, Alliance Boys had four. Mang’u High school, which produced the top candidate, had three boys in the top 100 nationally.

Nyanza’s Maseno School produced the second best candidate nationally, Trevor Mokaya Omangi, who had a performance index of 87.25. The school, once cast into the academic wilderness, has been improving since disciplinarian Paul Otula was posted there from Mang’u a few years ago. The school had five candidates among the top 100.

Alliance’s Hillary Kipkurui emerged third followed by Starehe Boys’ Constant Fredrick Oduol in fourth.

Ranked fifth was Kenneth Koome Kiambati of Alliance High while Edwin Magema from little-known Weiwei Secondary School in Sigor, Pokot, squeezed himself among the candidates from academic giants in sixth place.

In the KCPE exams, Oduol was ranked first nationally with 461 marks.

Friends School Kamusinga posted 36 slots among the top 100 positions in Western Province, but Musingu produced the top candidate Simiyu Brian who was ranked tenth nationally with 87.16.

In Coast, girls posted impressive grades, grabbing the top position in the province. Girls, who have been posting good results over the recent past, put up a poor show this time round, missing from the top 10 list.

Private schools

The first girl, Grace Wambui Njung’e of Moi Girls school, Eldoret, was ranked position 11 nationally.

She was followed by Doris Mwendwa Mbabu of Precious Blood Secondary School, Kilungu, who was ranked position 13.

Moi Girls, Eldoret had six girls in the top 100 nationally, followed by another national school, Alliance Girls, which had four girls.

In Nairobi, girls got 30 positions in the top 100; Central, 24; Western, 16; Nyanza, six while North Eastern had only two girls in the top 100 provincial rankings. In Eastern province, female students garnered 33 positions among the top 100 positions while in Rift Valley they had 43 positions.
Unlike in KCPE exams, where private schools dominate the top ranks, public school candidates occupied most of the top slots in KCSE exams, except in Mombasa, where eight of the top 10 candidates were from private schools.

Well known national schools such as Nairobi, Lenana and Kenya High had only a few candidates in the top 100, in spite of the fact that they admit the cream of the KCPE under the much-maligned quota system.

Releasing the results, Prof Ongeri said the performance of candidates improved in 11 subjects including English, Kiswahili and geography.

But there was a drop in eight subjects including the crucial ones: maths, biology, physics and chemistry.

That was certainly bad news, given that the same subjects had recorded a drop in performance in the 2008 KCSE exam, which was largely attributed to the violence in the aftermath of the 2007 General Election.

Prof Ongeri, however, said the number of candidates scoring grades of A minus and above in mathematics (13,371) and biology (8,567) was the highest in the past two years.

The minister explained that a shortage of teachers was the main explanation for the mediocre performance in the maths and sciences.

Prof Ongeri also announced the cancellation of results of 1,171 candidates from 69 centres for cheating.

He announced the formation of a special committee comprising officials from relevant government departments to study the poor performance in the subjects.

Prof Ongeri said 81,048 candidates obtained the minimum university entry grade of C+ and above.

That was an increase from the 72,000 who attained the same grades in the 2008 examinations.

It means more than 50,000 will miss admission to the country’s seven public universities based on the capacity of the 2008 candidates when the institutions admitted 20,000 candidates.

According to statistics released by the council, 120,793 candidates scored mean grades of C plain and above. The rest scored C minus and below, with 5,918 scoring mean grade E.

He said he was disturbed that candidates continued to cheat despite consistent efforts to end the vice.

“In some other schools, principals, teachers and parents were directly involved in collection of the money to facilitate cheating,” he said.

“The situation is very disturbing and deserves condemnation by all Kenyans of faith and who love their country.”

He announced that teachers who abetted teaching would be disciplined.

Prof Ongeri said construction of new schools and expansion of existing ones had helped increase access to secondary education.

Since 2008, he said, 405 new schools had been built while 75 per cent had introduced two to five streams.

Prof Ongeri had tough words for lazy teachers, saying some of them did not prepare well for their lessons.

“We have issued firm instructions to all teachers to ensure they revert to using proper teaching instruments,” he said.

Some 337,404 candidates sat the exams in 5,600 centres.

The minister said there was an encouraging trend in Central province where the number of girls sitting the exams was higher than boys, at 51 per cent.