New grading a boon to students
Doris Waithera of Langalanga Secondary School celebrates with her teachers at the school yesterday after she scored Grade A of 81 marks in the 2023 KCSE exams.
The number of Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education candidates who qualified for university admission in the 2023 examinations has risen from 173,345 in 2022 to 201,133.
This has partly been attributed to a new grading structure that has, for the first time, been used following recommendations by the Presidential Working Party on Education Reforms.
Under the system, the overall grade at KCSE examination considers mathematics, the best performed language subject among English, Kiswahili or Kenyan Sign Language and the best performed five subjects.
Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu said the reform would allow a larger number of students to pursue courses of their choice at university, diploma and certificate levels and artisan courses at technical and vocational education and training institutions.
The number of candidates who scored a mean score of A (plain) increased marginally from 1,146 in 2022 to 1,216.
“The real effect was felt in the A minus and C plus scored where there were major improvements. Also the C and D minus scores have gone down. It shows the grading system was favourable and wasn’t hard on candidates on the requirement to have two sciences,” Knec CEO David Njeng’ere told Nation.
Meanwhile, the Kenya National Examinations Council did not release the results through short text messages (SMS) as in previous years.
This was in reaction to the confusion that ensued following the release of the 2023 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examinations last November.
The results that appeared on the messages differed from the actual results on the Knec portal, making some people question the authenticity of the results, a matter that was debated in the National Assembly.
At the time, Mr Machogu appeared to lay blame on the service provider for the confusion and directed candidates, schools and parents to access the results via the Knec website.
The results downloaded by the candidates are clearly marked as ‘provisional’, an indicator that the final results will later be issued with the results slip and certificate.
The council has also avoided use of plus (+) and minus (-) symbols against grades to avoid the confusion occasioned in the KCPE results. Instead, it has used words to describe the grades.
The declaration of results as provisional also leaves a window for aggrieved candidates to petition the council through the National Examinations Appeals Tribunal.
