Ladies and Gentlemen, I am extremely excited to welcome all of you to this important ceremony meant for the release of the 2019 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) Examination results.
We promised to conclude this process before Christmas, in keeping with our recent reform trajectory, that seeks efficiency and effectiveness in the administration and processing of national examinations.
I must, however, admit that this is only the tail end of the whole examination process. Before today, thousands of gallant professionals, drawn from the entire Government spectrum, have burnt their midnight oil to ensure we succeeded.
It is about time that the country believed in the examination reforms sweeping across our country. The setting, administration and marking of the examinations is absolutely professional.
I now wish to address you on some critical sector issues ahead of the start of the 2020 academic calendar.
Fellow Kenyans, for sustainable capacity development of teachers under the CBC, and to improve the quality of education, the Government has revised the lowest preservice teacher training qualification from Certificate (P1) to Diploma level.
A curriculum for this new level of training has been completed and the new cohort of learners will be admitted to various colleges in 2020. I expect relevant departments to release details of the application and training process in due course.
At the August National Curriculum Reforms Conference, His Excellency President Uhuru Kenyatta pronounced that there will be no national examinations in Grade Six. To further provide directions on the transition of the first CBC cohort from Primary to Junior Secondary School in 2023, I wish to announce that the Task Force that I set up to advise me on Curriculum Reforms is in the process of finalizing Regulations and Guidelines on the establishment of institutions under the Basic Education Framework.
The proposed Regulations and Guidelines will be subjected to public participation before gazettement. Part of the proposals that we will expect Kenyans to dialogue on will be a recommendation that the Ministry establish Transition Committees at the National, County and Sub-County levels. A Terms of Reference for the committees will be to put in place strategies to ensure 100 percent transition of learners from Primary to Junior Secondary School in 2023.
Finally, fellow Kenyans, I wish to assure you that the CBC will be anchored on evidence-based decisions. As a result, the Task Force on Curriculum Reforms is recommending to set up a watertight monitoring and evaluation system in 2020 that will include baseline data indicators that will be relied on from time to time to make solid decisions on prudent utilisation of resources across the sector.
Government’s 100 per cent transition policy We are from January 2020 embarking on another campaign to enrol all candidates who sat KCPE this year in Form One. The Ministry will from the first day of reporting – January 13th 2020 – work with all relevant Government agencies to ensure that no candidate fails to join Form One.
I have asked all primary school head teachers – through the TSC and Kenya Primary School Heads Association – to develop an inventory of the schools to which their
2019 candidates were placed and liaise with all relevant agencies and institutions to ensure they are enrolled in Form One. I am today also asking the secondary school principals, through the TSC and Kenya Secondary School Heads Association, to stop at nothing until all the learners placed in their schools report and are dully enrolled.
I am happy to announce that applications for the 9,000 Ministry of Education scholarships – through the support of the World Bank-funded Secondary Education Quality Improvement Project (SEQIP) – closed on Monday. I am optimistic that needy candidates from the 110 subcounties and 15 urban areas with informal settlements will be awarded the scholarships and be enabled to join Form One in 2020. A further 9,000 will benefit from the same scholarships in 2021, bringing the total number of beneficiaries to 18,000 at a cost of Sh3 billion.
The Government is doing all it can to build more classrooms in public secondary schools. As a result, the Government will construct classrooms, laboratories and other infrastructure in the SEQIP target areas at a cost of Sh8 billion. While I commend the Government and
development partners for this work, I wish to urge other agencies and Government initiatives such as the Constituency Development Fund to step in and help us to expand the necessary infrastructure in our schools.
Leveraging on the NEMIS Platform I wish to use this opportunity to ask all schools to ensure that details of their learners are captured under the National Education Management Information System (NEMIS) platform. As of yesterday, I am happy to report that we have made tremendous progress in capturing of data of our learners and educational institutions. Already, a total of 9,112 public secondary schools and a further 3,915 private schools have been captured under the NEMIS system. Additionally, we have a commendable 3 million learners from public secondary schools enrolled in the NEMIS data while 112,032 have been enlisted from private secondary schools.
At the primary school level, 23,705 public primary schools have been enlisted in the NEMIS data. We have enrolled a combined 6.5 million primary school learners. I wish to ask all parents and teachers to take advantage of the simplified system of issuing birth certificates under the Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government to register all learners.
I wish to add that the NEMIS system has so far helped us to administer the medical insurance scheme for secondary school students, popularly called EduAfya . Further, the system is now critical since the entire Form One admission process is conducted through the platform. In January, we expect to capture daily realtime data on Form One reporting and enrolment thanks to the NEMIS system.
To enhance the capacity of NEMIS, the Ministry of ICT is upgrading our internet bandwidth from 1 GBPS to 10 GBPS that is supported by the Government Common Core Network (GCCN).
Admission to Universities and TVET Institutions The Government wishes to have youth proceed to their next level(s) of learning without delay. I am therefore asking the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) to immediately put in place mechanisms to start placing the 2019 KCSE Examination candidates in the various courses they are qualified for.
I particularly wish to encourage Kenyans to allow their youth to pursue courses in the now vibrant Technical, Vocation Education and Training sector.
Examination Candidature During the 2019 KCSE examination , there were 667,222 candidates who sat the examination. Of these, 355,782 (51.03%) were male, while 341,440 (48.97%) were female, a near gender parity.
A total 17 counties that had more female than male candidates in the 2019 KCSE examination compared to 18 counties in 2018. These were: Meru, Vihiga, Kiambu, Elgeyo Marakwet, Nyandarua, Tharaka Nithi, Kisumu, Uasin Gishu, Murang’a, Machakos, Kitui, Taita Taveta, Makueni, Kirinyaga, Kakamega, Kwale, and Nandi counties.
The examination was taken in 10,287 examination centres across the country compared to 10,078 last year.
Candidates with Special Needs A total of 1,672 candidates with special needs sat the 2019 KCSE examination compared with 1,499 candidates with special needs who sat the 2018 KCSE. The highest number of candidates with special needs who sat the examination comprised those who were Physically Impaired (651). Four candidates in this category scored a Mean Grade of A- (Minus) with 127 scored a Mean Grade of C+ (plus) and above. Clearly, given a good environment, learners with special needs can excel in examinations.
Subject Performance in the 2018 KCSE Examination In the 2019 KCSE examination, 16 subjects recorded a significant improvement in performance, compared to 14 subjects in 2018.
Eleven (11) subjects recorded a significant decline in performance in 2019 compared with 12 in 2017. There was no significant change in performance in three subjects.
I particularly wish to mention English, Kiswahili, chemistry, biology and physics as some of the critical subjects where performance significantly shot up in 2019 compared with 2018.
Performance by Gender in the 2019 KCSE Examination Female candidates performed better than male candidates in the following eight subjects: English, Kiswahili, CRE, Home Science, Art and Design, German and Kenya Sign Language.
Overall Grade Achievement in the 2019 KCSE The number of candidates attaining the highest overall Mean Grade (A Plain) in the KCSE examination rose from 315 (0.05%)
candidates in 2018 to 627 (0.09%) in the 2019 KCSE examination. Similarly, the number of candidates attaining the Mean Grade of A- (Minus) has shot up to 5,796 (0.83%) from 3,417 (0.57) in 2018.
Overall, the number of candidates with minimum university entry qualification of Mean Grade C+ and above in 2019 is 125,746 (18.02%) compared with 90,377 (13.77%) in the 2018 KCSE examination.
This analysis explains why I started my speech by asking Kenyans to believe in the reforms that we have been conducting. That the overall performance of candidates has been increasing since we reformed the system of administering the examinations means that candidates have settled down to working hard on their own – under the leadership of their teachers – to prepare for examinations.
Most Improved Candidates and Schools Fellow Kenyans, today I wish to address an issue that has troubled the Ministry for many years. Each year, we celebrate the top performers, lift them shoulder high and buy them all forms of gifts. Parents flock to top national schools to seek admission to these candidates.
On the contrary, we sneer at and express all forms of contempt at the candidates who score 200 marks and below. We write them off from future academic excellence. Some families marry off girls who score such low marks, while some boys are sent to menial jobs on the grounds that they are academic dwarfs. Today, I wish to debunk this outdated myths.
Our analysis of how individual candidates who scored as little as 177 ended up scoring top grades in the KCSE is one story of extreme hope and encouragement, especially coming in the face of the new Government policy of allowing all KCPE candidates to join Form One.
Read More . . . CLICK HERE
