The tradition has been that KCPE results are released immediately after Christmas Day Celebrations. December 27th and 28th are days that former KCPE candidates looked forward to. Well, Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiangi does not care about the status quo. In a move that probably caught many by surprise, the Cabinet Secretary has released the 2016 KCPE results today.
The event took place at Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) in Nairobi. This comes merely a month since the exams were completed and a day after the sister exams, KCSE, were completed. KCPE candidates can check their results by sending their eleven digit index number to 22252. This is the same number that has been used by the Ministry during the previous exams. Alternatively you can head over to KNEC website http://www.knec-portal.ac.ke.
For the curious folk out there the top candidate in this year’s KCPE examination scored 436 marks out of the possible 500. This is a drop compared to 2015 where the highest candidate scored 449 marks. On the same note it is worth noting that the top special needs candidate scored 421 marks. In total, only 5,190 candidates managed to score 400 marks and above. According to Matiangi, all these candidates will be offered a position in the National Schools of their choice. This is in contrast to 7,560 candidates in 2015. That’s a deviation of about 31 percent in regard to performance in the top bracket. Could it be that one exam isn’t necessarily comparable to another? A matter of weight function.
942,021 candidates sat for this year’s KCPE examination. This is an increase of 3,109 students as compared to the previous year, 2015, where only 938,912 candidates sat for the same exam. In terms of demographic, 49.7 percent were girls and 50.3 percent were boys. It is also worth mentioning that 1,950 special needs candidates sat in this year’s KCPE exam.
The next step is Form One selection process. The process kicks off immediately and is expected to be finalised by 9th December. It will be carried out electronically in Collaboration with the Ministry of ICT. That is roughly a week from now. The 2016 candidates should look forward to reporting for Form One on 9th January, 2017. This is another first one for the Ministry. Guys used to report during the month of February in previous years.
All the candidates who sat for this year’s exam are guaranteed of receiving their results. This is so because for a record first time there was not a single case of cheating. Thus NO students will have their results cancelled. Just earlier in the year, 7,809 KCSE candidates had their exams cancelled. Only 21 cases of malpractices and attempted cheating were reported across the country.
One of the things many were looking forward to was the re-introduction of the ranking system. That has not happened. You will have to wait a little longer. According to the Education CS, this was not effected because the law that gives that provision took effect late.
For next year’s KCPE candidates, the government has purposed to pay their KCPE exam fees. Candidates in both public and private schools will be beneficiaries of this. Private candidates have not been spared also. It has emerged that some were colluding with head teachers in their purported exam centres to engage in cheating. As such, the government will have the private candidates take their exams in ministry of education institutions such as Technical Institutions.
