Form One Selection: Wait is Over for KCPE Stars

Pupils who sat the 2019 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examination will from Monday know the secondary schools they have been admitted to.

The first group will be those joining the 136 national schools and who scored 400 marks and above.

The selection started in Naivasha immediately after the release of the KCPE test results on November 18.

Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha will release the names of those selected to join national schools.

Regional Selection

Selection for extra-county and county schools starts on December 3 and ends on December 5.

“The ministry has developed watertight criteria to ensure the process is fair, objective, transparent and in keeping with meritocracy,” Prof Magoha said.

The regional selection will take place in 11 designated centres.

The 1,083,456 pupils who sat the exam are eyeing slots in about 10,000 secondary schools.

Of these, 543,582 or 50.17 percent are boys while 539,874 are girls.

There were 103 national schools last year.

About 30,000 students joined national schools in 2018.

There are 734 extra-county schools and 1,412 county ones.

There are 6,451 sub-county schools and 1,164 private institutions.

A majority of the students will join county and sub-county schools.

Special Needs

There are 35 special-needs education secondary schools with a capacity for 1,500 students, according to the ministry.

These schools have been upgraded to national status.

The number of 2019 KCPE examination candidates who scored 400 marks and above dropped to 9,770, from 11,559 last year.

But those who scored 301 to 399 marks increased to 243,320 from 223,862.

This year, some 2,407 candidates with special needs sat the exam, with the top scoring 414 marks out of a possible 500.

Face of Kenya

The team that has been meeting in Naivasha had to ensure selection to national schools reflects the face of Kenya.

The top five candidates of either gender from every sub-county will be placed in national schools on the basis of the choices they made where possible.