Boys floor girls in 22 subjects done in KCSE

NAIROBI: Boys beat girls in 22 out of the 29 subjects examined in last year's KCSE.

Female candidates performed better than their male counterparts in English and Kiswahili, CRE, Home Science, Art and Design, German and French.

In English 242,933 female candidates scored a mean of 40.35 while 278,638 male candidates scored 40.24. Girls also shone in Kiswahili where the 242,739 candidates scored a mean of 48.62 with their male counterparts (278,420) scoring 47.24.

Comparing the score to the previous year's, both genders improved where 223,734 female candidates scored 39.44 in English while 259,665 male candidates scored 38.33.

In 2014, 223,597 female candidates had a mean score of 48.32 while their male counterparts (259,477) had 47.14. Boys shone in Mathematics Alternative A and B categories with means of 29.16 and 8.81 respectively while girls scored 24.27 and 7.84 respectively. Some 277,993 boys and 242,281 girls sat for mathematics.

Boys also took over the sciences category. Those who sat for biology (236,582) had a mean score of 36.64, while those who sat for physics (99,494) had 44.00. Some 275,031 boys sat for chemistry and they had a mean score of 35.86.

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Girls who sat for biology, physics and chemistry were 226,982, 39,606 and 240,857 respectively scoring means of 32.87, 42.99 and 32.64 respectively. Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang'i yesterday said while male candidates sat for all the subjects that were offered during the examination, few or no female candidates did some subjects.

"No female candidates sat for metalwork while a few (between one and six) sat for woodwork, building and construction, power mechanics, electricity and drawing and design," he said. Of the 522,870 candidates who sat for the 2015 KCSE, 279,289 were male while 243,581 were female, representing a gender parity of male: female 53.41:46.59 per cent, according to Dr Matiang'i. Power Mechanics and Electricity were the best performed subjects.

Power Mechanics students had a mean score of 69.71 per cent while those who studied Electricity had 67.06 per cent. There were fewer improved subjects -13 in last year's examination compared to 15 in 2014.

They are English, Mathematics Alternative A, Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Biology for the Blind. Others are Home Science, Agriculture, Woodwork, Aviation Technology, French and Music.

General Science, Geography, Art and Design, Metal Work, Building Construction, Power Mechanics and German recorded no improvement.

"Some 10 subjects that registered a decline in performance were Mathematics alternative B, History and Government, Christian Religious Education, Islamic Religious Education, Electricity, Drawing and Design, Computer studies, Arabic, Kenyan sign language and Business Studies," Matiang'i said in a statement.

Seven subjects that showed no significant change were General Science, Geography, Art and design, Metalwork, Building construction, Power mechanics and German.

Thirteen of the 29 subjects recorded a mean of less than 50 per cent, which include English (40.29 per cent), Kiswahili (47.88 per cent), Mathematics Alternative A (26.88 per cent), Mathematics Alternative B (8.29 per cent), Biology (34.80 per cent), Physics (43.68 per cent), Chemistry (34.36 per cent) and Biology for the Blind (20.77 per cent).