This archive report was first published on 10 May 2021.
Surprise Gains in KCSE Exams Amid Covid-19 Disruptions ¶
Despite the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of candidates who scored grade A in the 2020 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination rose 42 percent, compared to the previous year.
Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha attributed the improvement to the resilience of students, saying, 'This is one of the clearest indicators that candidates performed better in 2020 compared with 2019, the negative effects of Covid-19 notwithstanding.'
Magoha also noted that the number of candidates who scored grade A-and above increased 14 percent to 7,313 compared to 6,423 the previous year.
The improved performance has set the stage for a scramble for top university courses, with liberal arts and environmental courses being less preferred due to the perceived limited job opportunities in these fields.
According to the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS), a higher number of students placed to degree courses prefer technical courses to liberal arts, with an estimated 54.2 percent of the 122,831 candidates who sat for the 2019 KCSE examinations enrolling for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) degree programmes.
The 2020 KCSE results also registered remarkable improvement in 19 of the 31 examined subjects, with 19 percent of candidates scoring C+ and above.
Magoha said results for 287 candidates involved in various forms of examination cheating had been cancelled, and that rogue officials were arrested for attempting to leak examination material at various centres.
He also noted that a total of 652 female candidates sat the 2020 KCSE examination in hospitals after delivery compared to 282 in 2019, a trend linked to the prolonged closure of schools to combat the spread of Covid-19.
