Nairobi News

Education Secretary Jacob Kaimenyi has released the KCPE results for more than 889,000 candidates even as Kenyans slammed the government’s new policy of not ranking candidates and schools.

Only individual results can be accessed by sending index numbers to 22252 or visiting the examinations body’s website, www.knec.ac.ke.

Many users are however unable to access the website which has crashed due to huge traffic. The SMS service costs Sh25.

Prof Kaimanyi defended the decision to do away with ranking as a well-thought out policy, saying the “demerits far outweigh the merits”.

“The media too should respect this and not rank kienyeji (informally),” said the minister.

Some educationists and Kenyans criticized the policy saying it was prone to abuse and would dumb down education.

“What’s the purpose of the event if no ranking will be done?” posed Mark Muteti on Twitter.

QUALITY

“My fear is that well connected people can now place their children in any school they want because nobody knows what they scored.”

But the minister said the discontinuation would not affect the quality of education.

“Ranking negatively affects the morale of teachers and students in poorly performing schools,” said Prof Kaimenyi.

“Ranking is converting our children into robots. Cramming just to pass exams. Ranking creates unnecessary competition among schools.”

The minister said majority of candidates attained between 201 to 250 marks in a year that overall performance was almost the same as the previous year.

On gender parity, 49.7 per cent of candidates were girls while 50.3 per cent were boys.

CHEATING

Prof Kaimenyi announced that 1,702 candidates from 93 centres were involved in exam cheating and only 15 counties, out of 47, had no cheating.

“It is sad to know that some teachers and parents were involved in exam irregularities,” decried Prof Kaimenyi.

At the same event, Education Principal Secretary Dr Belio Kipsang reityerated that examination fees for KCPE and KCSE in public schools will be paid for by the govt.