New entrants shake up the old order

OUMA WANZALA | NATION
Moi Girls High School Eldoret principal Magdalene Sang joins her students in celebration after the school was ranked 6th nationally in the KCSE exams.

Newly-created national schools put up a strong performance in last year’s Form Four exams, producing seven of the top 20 nationally.

Maranda High School from Nyanza was top, leapfrogging the well-established national schools that have dominated the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education results charts for the last 22 years.

It had a performance rating of 11.28 out of the maximum 12, meaning that on average, all its 261 candidates scored a mean grade of B+.

Elevated this year

It was previously a provincial school before being elevated to national status this year, implying that its candidates did not perform as highly in KCPE as those of the previous 18 national schools.

The school was followed by Alliance High, a well-established national school, which had a mean grade of 11.1.

Pangani Girls, another new entrant to the national schools category, was ninth with its 267 candidates attaining a mean grade of 10.4.

Maranda was still the leader in the county school (provincial) category.

Other new national schools in the top 20 were Friends School Kamusinga (12), Kapsabet Boys (15), Karima Girls (16), Moi High Mbiruri (18), and Murang’a High (19).

Three of these new national schools, however, performed dismally, posting mean grades of C+. Bura Girls scored a mean grade of 6.7 while Ribe Boys and Tartar Girls recorded a mean average of 6.8 and 7.1, respectively.

Thika-based Mary Hill, which beat perennial top performers like Starehe and Nairobi School, was eighth nationally.

It was its highest ever ranking having spent a long time in the academic wilderness. It has enjoyed a steady rise over the last four years.

Maseno School, whose performance has been rising was ranked 14th.

Education Minister Sam Ongeri said the new national schools had been allocated Sh25 million each to expand their classrooms and laboratories.