KCSE results to be released anytime

The Kenya Certificate of Secondary Examination results for 965,501 candidates could be released anytime from today, The Standard has established.

The Kenya National Examination Council (Knec) met on Tuesday and later briefed Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba.

The two meetings paved the way for release of Kenya Primary School Education Assessment (KPSEA) results for grade six learners. In December last year, CS Ogamba indicated that the 2024 KCSE results will be released during the first two weeks of January.

“Traditionally, KCSE results were normally released in January and we are keeping to that tradition and we will be releasing them within the next two weeks,” he said then in Kisii.

The team is expected to meet President William Ruto upon his return from Ghana before releasing the results.

By last evening, sources indicated a likelihood that the results could be released anytime from today. The results will however mark the final stroke for the 2024 KCSE cohort in their secondary school journey that was marked by major setbacks from the beginning.

As results are released, it emerged that over 200,000 students who would have sat the 2024 KCSE exam are missing four years after they completed their primary school education lifting the lid on the government's push for 100 per cent transition. While the government insists that all candidates who sit KCPE examinations join secondary school under the transition policy, the number of candidates taking KCSE four years later paints a different picture showing major decline.

READ: 2024 KCSE results to be released in two weeks - CS Migos

The 2024 KCSE cohort highlights the sharpest decline yet. While 1,179,192 candidates sat for their Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) in 2020, only 965,501 are sitting their KCSE last year.

This translates to 213,691 missing candidates, the highest number of unaccounted-for learners since the policy’s rollout in 2018.  

However, the revelation dents the 100 per cent transition policy initiated by former President Uhuru Kenyatta in 2018 as the figures reveal a disturbing trend of student attrition. 

The exit of this year’s candidates will also be a critical marker in the phase-out of the 8-4-4 education system in secondary schools, leaving only three classes under the outgoing curriculum.

For this Class of 2024, their secondary education journey began in 2020 under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Schools were abruptly closed in March 2020, forcing students into an eight-month hiatus until November of that year. 

The delay shifted the academic calendar, and the candidates wrote their KCPE exams in 2021 instead of 2020, marking an early disruption to their educational trajectory. 

Since then, the students faced a compressed curriculum, crammed schedules, and a high-pressure learning environment, as the education system struggled to regain lost time. 

In 2023, three years after the pandemic, schools managed to recourse the school calendar back to the January- December cycle and the ministry noted that the schools had completely covered the time lost during the pandemic.

However, these candidates were slapped with another round of disruption this year. In April, schools were forced to extend the school holidays for two weeks following heavy rains and floods that hit the country as schools prepared for reopening of second term.

This ultimately shortened the term that was set to run for 13 weeks to 11 weeks; meaning the students lost two learning weeks. However, the Ministry of Education dismissed a push by a section of stakeholders to extend the term to recover for the time lost.

Instead, the then Education Cabinet Secretary said teachers would apply different options such as remedials, morning and evening classes to recover the lost time within the 11 weeks.

Notably, just like the Covid-19 shutdown of schools, this year’s closure posed a paradox on the continuity of teaching and learning outside class leaving many students without an alternative in the bouts of disruption.

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And stakeholders argue little steps have been taken to mount an alternative robust remote learning infrastructure to ensure continuity of learning.

“This is not the first time that schools have been shut down, it has happened before during Covid and we probably need to think of an effective out-of-class solution that can be developed slowly so that if we have another disruption then we can switch to it,” Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers, Akello Misori said.

But that was not all as the second term continued to face disruption in June in various parts of the country following protests and demonstrations that rocked the country against the Finance Bill 2024.

Dubbed the Gen Z protest, some schools opted for an early midterm break due to concerns over students' safety. The three-day midterm break was extended to a week in some schools. But before they could regain stability, schools were again forced to extend the second term holiday in August, eating into the shortest term of the year.

Initially scheduled to run for nine weeks, the term was compressed to eight weeks. The strike affected secondary schools after the Kenya Union of Post-Primary Education Teachers (Kuppet) fronted six demands be met before calling the strike off.