Boys post better as Magoha cautions on gender disparity

Boys performed better than girls in the just released Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) 2020.

Some 589 boys scored A plain, 4,049 A minus, 8,815 B plus, 14, 932 B plain, 21,845 B minus and 30,924 scored C plus.

On the other hand, 304 girls got straight As, 2,371 A minus, 5,612 B plus, 10,275 B plain, 16,349 B minus and 27,075 had C plus.

Interestingly 15,225 boys scored Es as opposed to 12,821 girls who scored a similar grade. Girls who scored D+ were 58,371 while boys who scored similar grades were 59,527.

In terms of schools, sub-county institutions had 83,640 candidates with E, county schools 22,529, private schools 9,016, extra county 6,296 while the national schools had 461 candidates posting Es.

Worrying trend

Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha announced that despite the vagaries of the Covid-19 pandemic that interrupted learning for the candidates for about seven months, the 2020 KCSE performed better compared to the candidates who sat for the exams in 2019.

In the released results, 893 candidates obtained an overall Grade A compared to 627 candidates in 2019.

Of the 747,161 candidates who sat for the examination, 380,327 were males while 366,834 were females, representing 50.90 per cent and 49.10 per cent of the total candidature respectively.

“This is one of the clearest indicators that candidates have performed better in 2020 compared with 2019, the negative effects of Covid-19 notwithstanding,” said Magoha.

While releasing results at ‘Mtihani’ House yesterday, Magoha said the number of candidates with minimum university entry qualification of Grade C+ and above rose to 143,140 up from 125,746 in 2019.

At the same time of all the subjects taken during the exams, 19 subjects recorded a significant improvement in performance, compared 21 subjects that recorded a significant improvement in performance in 2019.

“There was no significant change in performance in two of the subjects offered during the 2020 KCSE examination,” said Magoha.

Fifteen counties had more female than male candidates compared to 17 counties in 2019.

The 15 counties are Taita Taveta, Kwale, Nyandarua, Nyeri, Kirinyaga, Murang’a, Kiambu, Machakos, Kitui, Meru, Nandi, Elgeyo Marakwet, Kakamega, Vihiga and Kisumu.

In addition, the counties with high gender disparity in favour of male candidates were Mandera, Wajir, Garissa, Turkana and Homa Bay, prompting Magoha to direct Quality Assurance and Standards to investigate the cause of such disparity.