Gov’t announces special exam for over 9,000 candidates who missed final KCPE
By Wycliffe Nyamasege, November 23, 2023
More than 9,000 candidates who missed the 2023 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) exam will have another chance to take the tests.
Speaking at Mitihani House in Nairobi on Thursday, November 23, Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu said the Ministry of Education will conduct a special exam for the candidates in January 2024 to ensure no pupil in the 2023 cohort misses Form One admission.
He noted that a total of 1,415,325 pupils were registered for the 2023 KCPE exam. However, 1,406,557 candidates sat for the exam.
According to the CS, 9,354 candidates failed to take their exams which were conducted between October 30 and November 1.
“To ensure that no candidate misses out on joining Form One from the final 2023 KCPE examination cohort, the Ministry of Education will conduct thorough mapping of any of those who may have failed to sit their examination this year in order to administer a Special Exam in January 2024,” the CS said.
At the same time, the CS said some 205 candidates were allowed to sit for the 2023 exam despite not having registered for the tests.
This was the last KCPE exam to be conducted in the country after 38 years of the implementation of the 8-4-4 education system. It paves the way for the full implementation of the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC).
The top candidate scored 428 marks out of the possible 500, a slight drop compared to last year’s highest score of 431.
CS Machogu, however, did not name the top candidates during the official release of the results.
Some 8,525 candidates scored between 400-500 marks, while 352,782 candidates scored 300-399 marks.
A total of 658,278 candidates attained a score of 200 to 299 marks with 383,025 others scoring between 100 to 199 marks. Some 2060 pupils attained between 001 and 099 marks.