Knec: Junior school students to sit national examination beginning this year
Knec CEO David Njengere speaks during the release of the 2024 KCSE results at Mitihani House in Nairobi on January 9, 2025.
Junior school students will for the first time sit a national examination beginning this year.
This was announced on Thursday, January 9 as the Ministry of Education
released the results of the 965,501 candidates who sat for the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations last year.
Beginning 2025, the Kenya National Examinations Council (Knec) will be administering a summative national assessment at Junior Schools for the first time, the Kenya Junior Secondary Education Assessment (KJSEA).
“As we are all aware, Knec will be going through a phenomenal period in its history, where we will be administering a summative national assessment at Junior School for the first time, the Kenya Junior Secondary Education Assessment (KJSEA). The assessment will be administered to an estimated 1,145,585 learners who were in Grade 8 in 2024 and have now transited to Grade 9,” said KNEC CEO David Njengere.
Knec will also be preparing to administer the Kenya Pre-Vocational Level Education Assessment (kpvlea) to an estimated 5,306 learners following the stage-based pathway.
“In readiness of KJSEA and KPVLEA, KNEC undertook a pilot in June 2024 and made all the necessary adjustments based on feedback derived from the pilot. One of the key outputs were sample papers for the Assessment, which are now available online, from the KNEC CBA Portal, for access by schools in preparing the learners,” KNEC CEO, David Njengere said.
KNEC will also be sending an online questionnaire for the KJSEA candidates through their schools to elicit feedback on their interests and personality, which will form part of the crucial information to guide their placement.
Registration for the 2025 KPSEA candidates will begin on January 27, 2025, while the portals for KJSEA and KCSE examination candidates will be opened on February 17, 2025.
“I request all Centre managers to ensure that all their candidates are registered for the subjects that they are learning because there will be no provisions for erroneous registrations. Any candidates who will be erroneously registered in 2025 will have no alternative but to defer their examination to 2026.
The results released today is for the cohort that sat for its Kenya Certificate of Primary Education in March 2021 being the first cohort whose academic calendar was disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic with their figures noting a 6.89 per cent increase compared to 2023 that had 903,260 candidates.
A total of 103,125 professionals from the Teachers Service Commission, Ministry of Education, security officers, centre managers, supervisors, invigilators as well as drivers were engaged in the field administration process. The council engaged 30,370 examiners for the marking of the KCSE examinations in 40 examination centres.
The candidates’ assessment began in January 2024, with projects from Agriculture, Art and Design, Agriculture, woodwork, metalwork, building construction and computer studies being included in the process.
Though there was an improvement in the quality of registration of data for the KCSE in 2024, there were cases of 113 candidates in 88 examination centres who were registered for the wrong subjects despite Knec reiterating that KCSE papers will be personalised.
The exams took exactly one month, beginning October 22 and ending November 22, 2024, and marked the beginning of the end of the administration of the KCSE exams that will come to a close in 2027.
The Ministry also assured Kenyans that certificates for all 2023 KCPE candidates and KCSE examination candidates will be available before end of February 2025.
