KCSE analysis: There's no stopping raging girl power

Girls have been equally topping in national exams. [File, Standard]

Girls performance in The Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) has been outstanding in recent years as girls now dominate in the national examinations.

For this year’s KCSE, Kenya High School produced the second and fifth-best students.

 The school’s Barassa Maryanne Njeri scored a mean score of 87.087 while Muthuri Natasha Wawira scored 86.961.

Kenya High also school recorded the highest number of As in the national exams (76)

Some 699,745 students sat for the exams

Previously boys reigned with the top scores until four years ago when girls started topping the charts as well.

In 2016, the then cabinet secretary for education Dr Fred Matiang’i   announced the KCSE results and girls had claimed 16 out of the 20 top slots from the national exams. 

This was the wakeup call from the girls. Since then they have taken control. Now Girls secondary schools are also dominating the national exams.

In 2017, Karimi Naomi Kawira, a student from Pangani Girls' High School was the best candidate in the country with a mean score of 87.011, while Sharon Chepchumba from Moi Girls High School in Eldoret came in second with a mean score of 86.830. Harriet Mueke from Mary Hill Girl came in fifth with a mean grade of 85.956.

Out of the 615, 773 students who had sat for the exams that year, 28,386 girls scored an average of C+ and above, the minimum grade required for university entry a drop from 50,415 girls who had qualified in 2016

In the 2017 KCSE exams, 61 girls scored grade A, with Alliance Girls High School recording the highest number of As followed by Kenya High school.

However, in 2018, Juliet Otieno a student from Pangani Girls' High School was the best KCSE candidate with a mean score of 87.644.

This was the second time the girls' school had produced the best KCSE candidate in the country.

Once again girls performed better than the boys in the national exams.

Out of the 660,204 2018 candidates who sat for the exams last year, 321,576 of them were girls, having represented 48.7 per cent of the population.