Number of available varsity courses to be out this week
What you need to know:
- Group is the first beneficiary of free primary and secondary education.
- Agency in charge of colleges placement to complete audit of slots after which students will select preferred courses.
Candidates who sat the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) exams last year will from this week know the number of courses available for selection.
This is after the agency in charge of placement completes an audit of available slots in universities and colleges.
It will enable the candidates — who are the first beneficiaries of free primary education and day secondary education — to choose their preferred courses based on their performance in the national examinations.
They joined primary school in 2003 when the system was introduced by the Narc government.
In the past, candidates selected their courses prior to exams but guidelines introduced last year relaxed the admission rules to enable students land their preferred courses.
The Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) has told Sunday Nation that it is in the final stages of the audit before announcing the cut-off points for university selections.
“From February, we invited all colleges and universities to update us on their programmes and capacities online in readiness for the 2015/2016 placement of government-sponsored students to degree and diploma programmes. All of them have already done it,” said KUCCPS acting CEO John Muraguri.
“We are working on clarifications with some universities and colleges but by Tuesday we shall have completed the process, then decide the cut-off points for university selection,” he said.
He said the audit was necessary as some institutions may have increased their capacities, introduced new courses, or scrapped others within the past year.
BEST IN THREE YEARS
Some 149,717 students qualified to join university after attaining grade C+ and above. This is 17.6 per cent higher than the 123,365 students who scored the same grade last year. Of these, 61,418 (41 per cent) were female and 88,299 (59 per cent) were male.
Female candidates performed better in Christian Religious Education, English, Kiswahili, Art and Design and Home Science, while males were good in sciences. Courses that candidates are selected to pursue are largely dependent on their performance in certain cluster subjects.
The good performance, which education CS Jacob Kaimenyi said was the best in three years, is expected to put pressure on the agency, which last year lowered entry points to strike a balance between the ever improving results and capacity.
This is even as the government banned the ranking system in an attempt to slow down competition, which it said forced students to engage in cheating.
Lowering of points has continuously been witnessed since 2003 after the government embarked on large-scale expansion of public universities, which increased from six to 22 currently.
The agency is also expected to select students for private universities as they are also eligible for State sponsorship.
