The government has released Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) exam results without ranking of students and schools. The move has upset hundreds of private schools that count on official rankings to attract students.
Education Cabinet secretary Jacob Kaimenyi handed over the results of 880,486 pupils who sat the examination this year in a peculiar event which did not see top candidates or schools mentioned. Instead the county education chiefs were handed the overall results of schools in their jurisdictions. “Ranking creates unnecessary competition among schools which may as a result lead such schools to engage in examination irregularities to compete favourable,” said Mr Kaimenyi during the release of the results at Mitihani House.
A total of 443,672 candidates (or 50.39 per cent of the total candidature) attained between 1 and 250 marks while 436,814 pupils got more than that 251 marks, representing 49.61 per cent of those who sat the exam. More than 880,000 candidates sat the exam in 24,278 centres across the country this year, an increase from 2013, when 839,000 candidates took part in 23,819 centres.
The government abolished the ranking of schools and candidates to reduce cut-throat competition and cheating in national examinations, a move that has since been protested by teachers unions who claim they were not consulted. There were a total 1,702 cases of irregularities in the examination — representing 0.19 per cent of all candidates – with Kiswahili and English being the most affected subjects.
The candidates can access the results as soon as they are released by sending their index numbers through SMS to 22252. They can also download their results by logging onto the Kenya National Examinations Council’s website, www.knec.ac.ke, and keying in their index numbers.
There were 1,702 cases of irregularities in the examination, representing 0.19 per cent of the 880,446 candidates, Prof Kaimenyi announced. He noted that English and Kiswahili recorded the highest cases of irregularities, saying poor supervision and invigilation was to blame for most of the cases.
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