Candidates to know 2024 KCSE results next week, says Ogamba

Officials during the distribution of KCSE examination materials at Nakuru East Examination distribution centre on November 11, 2024.  [File, Standard]

The 965,501 candidates who sat the 2024 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) exams could know their fate on Tuesday next week when the Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba will release the results to the public.

Education Cabinet Secretary, Julius Ogamba on Tuesday said examiners are finalising on the marking of the KCSE exams ahead of the release of the results.

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

Sources, however, hinted to The Standard that the examination results could be out as early as next week, Tuesday.

Ogamba spoke in Kisii during a cultural event of the Abagusii community at Kenyoro Mixed Secondary School in North Mugirango.

The CS dismissed delays in the KCSE release noting that the date has always been January and not December as earlier speculated by a section of the media.

“Results that used to be released in December were for the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) and this year, we did not have KCPE, and that might have caused some confusion. We’re going to release the KCSE exam results in January, the first two weeks of the month,” the CS said.

The KCSE exams officially came to an end on November 22, 2024, paving the way for the marking exercise. The candidates are the fourth last cohort under the 8-4-4 education system. The marking exercise was scheduled to take three weeks and came to an end in mid-December. The exercise happened in 35 centres, which included secondary schools and colleges.

Alliance High School, State House Girls, Sunshine High School, Starehe Girls, Limuru Girls, Thika High, Buruburu High school and Alliance Girls are some of the centres where marking was done.

Others, include Murang’a TTC, Moi Forces Academy (Nairobi), Upper Hill High, Loreto Girls, St Georges High, Lang’ata High, Kenya High, Moi Girls Isinya and Lenana School.

The results come after a series of examination reforms that were introduced in 2016 under then-Education CS Fred Matiang’i.

These reforms aimed to ensure transparency, curb cheating, and provide quick feedback to students.

Further, stringent measures were introduced in the 2024 exam administration, as part of curbing cheating, which includes personalising papers and not printing extra papers.

The changes would include candidates who engage in examination cheating being held personally responsible in new guidelines rolled out this year. This is a shift from the traditional practice where malpractice by some candidates was used to punish an entire school.

This year, the morning and afternoon session papers were collected from the storage containers separately, after the introduction of double collection in a bid to cure the problem of early exposure– which has been identified as the biggest threat to examination integrity since the 2016 reforms.

Initially schools collected both morning and afternoon exam papers together in the morning and returned both scripts in the evening to the container after the completion of the afternoon session.

This year’s candidates will be the second cohort to benefit from a new KCSE grading system that was adopted in 2023.

The new system was proposed by a team formed by President William Ruto known as the Presidential Working Party for Education Reform.

The new system, according to the Kenya National Examination Council(KNEC), said would help more students qualify for university and improve grades.

Under the new system, KNEC will rank the seven best-performing subjects to determine the student’s overall grade.

Only two mandatory subjects used in the grading of the learners will be Mathematics and one language, (English, Kiswahili or Kenyan Sign Language).

In addition to the two mandatory subjects – the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) will consider any other five best performed subjects.

This is a shift from the previous arrangement where up to five subjects were mandatory in the grading of learners.