Pensive wait for candidates ahead of exam results release

The 1.2 million candidates who sat the 2022 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) exams will know their results today.

Education Cabinet Secretary, Ezekiel Machogu, will release the results at the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) premises, even as he assured of an accountable process, free from any irregularities.

“We put the necessary measures in place and I assure you there will be no cheating because we had personal accountability at an individual level from the centre manager to the security personnel, supervisors and invigilators,” said Machogu.

The release of the results will set in motion the process of placing the Standard Eight learners to secondary schools.

 This is the second last group of candidates under the 8-4-4 education system, with the last group expected to sit the last KCPE exam next year.

Ministry officials administration of national examinations has been made possible with the effective coordination of government ministries and departments.

Credible exam

Ministries of Interior and National Coordination of Government, ICT, Teachers Service Commission (TSC) as well as KNEC have worked together to deliver a credible exam.

The first Grade Six national assessment was also administered alongside the KCPE candidates since it was expected to account for 40 per cent of the candidate’s final mark while the remaining 60 per cent was to come from the classroom teacher scores drawn from the school-based assessments in Grade Four, Five and Six.

This has however changed owing to recommendations of the Presidential Working Party on Education Reforms (PWPER), which domiciled the Junior Secondary Schools (JSS) in primary schools. This was contrary to the initial plan that had placed JSS at secondary schools.

A majority of parents with Grade Six learners are anxiously waiting for JSS guidelines to help them plan for January, given that the Kenya Primary School Education Assessment (KPSEA) they wrote will not be used to place learners.

They are optimistic that the Ministry will provide a direction today.

The examinations mark the end of the re-arranged academic calendar that was brought about by Covid-19 pandemic disruptions.

 Beginning January, the country will go back to its traditional academic calendar that starts in January and ends in November of each year.

Transition to secondary 

In line with the Government policy, it will be expected that all the over 1.2 million learners will transit to secondary schools.

In the 2021 KCPE, six papers recorded an improvement in performance when compared to the year 2020, which included English Composition, Kiswahili Lugha, Kiswahili Insha, Kenyan Sign Language Composition, Science and Social Studies.

Three other papers, Mathematics, English Language and Religious Education, recorded a drop in performance in 2021 when compared to 2020, while Kenyan Sign Language recorded a comparable performance in 2021 and 2020.

In terms of gender, the performance of male and female candidates was comparable though female candidates performed slightly better than their male counterparts in English and Kiswahili.

Male candidates performed slightly better than their female counterparts in Kenyan Sign Language, Mathematics, Science and Social Studies and Religious Education. In the 2021 KCPE examination, overall performance im