Olive Wachira Mwea of Riara Primary School and Rawlings Odhiambo of Kakamega Hill School shared the top KCPE spot with 453 marks, while Ikombe Primary School in Yatta, Machakos County, was named the best-performing school nationally.
The results were released on November 20, 2018, at Star of the Sea Primary School in Mombasa, where education officials also addressed concerns over cheating, impersonation and attempts to compromise the national exams.
Ikombe, a public school with 95 candidates, posted a mean score of 418 marks. Riara, a private school in Nairobi, had 76 of its 168 candidates score above 400 marks and recorded a mean score of 386.9.
Kenya National Examination Council chairperson George Magoha said cartels had collected as much as Sh6 billion to undermine the examinations. He added that parents and teachers had paid between Sh1,000 and Sh90,000 to obtain exam questions this year.
“This was a big fight that we had to escalate security measures and protect the examinations from the bad people,” said Prof Magoha.
Education Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed said the overall performance improved compared with 2017. She said the number of candidates scoring 400 marks and above rose to 12,273 from 9,846 last year, while 228,414 candidates scored between 301 and 401 marks, up from 217,307 in 2017.
She also said 574,927 candidates scored between 201 and 300 marks, compared with 529,897 last year, and that only 2,177 candidates fell between 1 and 100 marks, down from 2,360 in 2017.
Amina said the ministry was alarmed by rising teenage pregnancies and blamed parents for failing in their responsibilities. She said preliminary figures showed the problem was more serious than first thought.
Teachers face action over abuse and cheating ¶
Teachers Service Commission chief executive Nancy Macharia said 32 teachers had been deregistered for sexual relationships with students. She added that head teachers and teachers who concealed sexual abuse would also face punishment.
“Those who have been complacent in the matter of teenage pregnancies will be dealt with.”
Basic Education Principal Secretary Belio Kipsang also blamed parents and teachers for the rise in pregnancies and said the ministry was working on policies to make schools child-friendly.
“We cannot use our theatre (classrooms) to do what we are not supposed to do. Parents and teachers will he held accountable,” said Kipsang.
On the exam itself, Amina said 2,495 special candidates sat the KCPE, with the best among them scoring 446 marks. Out of 1,060,711 candidates, only four had their results cancelled after being found guilty of impersonation during monitoring.
TSC also recognised Boru Racha, Mohamed Hassan and Beladine Dothyo for exemplary handling of the KCPE administration, even as it warned staff against irregularities. Macharia said 26 teachers were under disciplinary process for abetting impersonation and cheating, and that the commission had launched an audit to ensure only TSC-accredited teachers teach in public and private institutions.
Amina further said absentee candidates dropped from 9,726 in 2017 to 8,347. She said all candidates who sat the exam would proceed to Form One.
She also said girls performed better in English, Kiswahili and Kenyan Sign Language, while boys did better in Mathematics, Sciences, Social Science and Religious Education studies.
