KCSE highlights: Girls take top slots

Girls’ schools dominated the top positions in this year’s Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education Examinations (KCSE) released today.

Singore Girls High in Elgeyo Marakwet is the best performing school in the country with a performance index of 69.9 points.

Light Academy in Mombasa came second with 69.1 points, followed by Alliance Girls School – 68.6 points, Kenya High School – 68.2 points and Loreto Girls School in Limuru with 68.1 points.

In this year’s results released by Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i, the number of candidates who attained  the highest overall mean Grade (A Plain) in the KCSE examination remained almost equal in 2016 and 2017, with 142 students getting A this year compared to 141 candidates last year.

“Overall, the number of candidates with minimum university entry qualification of Mean Grade C+ and above is 70,073 (11.38 per cent) in the 2017 KCSE examination compared to 88,929 (15.41 per cent) in 2016,” said Dr Matiang’i.

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Here are the highlights of the report released on Wednesday at the Nairobi School:

• Overall, there is a decline in number of students who have qualified to join university, with girls performing better than boys.
• Number of grade As increases to 142 from 141 in 2016.
• A minuses reduce by more than half to 2,714 from 4,645in 2016.
• Karimi Naomi of Pangani Girls emerges top candidate with a mean of 87.011; Sharon Chepchumba from Moi Girls takes position 2 as Kamau Brian Maina from Alliance High School settles for the third position.
• Pangani Girls, Nairobi, is the most improved school as Alliance Girls and Kenya High shine.
• Knec withholds results for 10 schools pending investigations; candidates to know their fate on January 18.
• 15 counties had more female than male candidates. They are: Taveta, Nyandarua, Nyeri, Kirinyaga, Murang’a, Kiambu, Machakos, Kitui, Meru, Makueni, Tharaka Nithi, Laikipia, Elgeyo Marakwet, Vihiga and Kisumu counties.
• Five candidates who were caught engaging in examination malpractices were disqualified before the KCSE examination season was over.

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