Kenya’s top KCPE candidates in the 2018 results finished with 453 marks, two marks below the previous year’s best performance. Rawlings Odhiambo of Kakamega Hills and Olive Mwea Wachira of Riara School, Nairobi, shared the top spot.
The results were released on 20 November 2018 at Star of the Sea Primary School in Mombasa by Education Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed. She said the overall performance had improved, with more than 50 per cent of candidates scoring above 250 marks out of 500.
Ms Mohamed said girls outperformed boys in English and Kiswahili, while boys led in Mathematics, Science, Social Studies and Religious Education.
According to the figures she announced, 12,273 candidates scored above 401 marks. Another 228,414 fell in the 301 to 400 range, while 574,927 scored between 201 and 300. A further 234,573 candidates were in the 101 to 200 bracket, and only 2,177 scored between 1 and 100.
The Kenya National Examinations Council also cancelled the results of four candidates over impersonation.
“The performance, which was low in 2016, has started rising, a clear indicator that teachers are now seriously focused on their work and the candidates are working hard in class knowing that only hard work will count and not the cheating that had become common in some centres,” Ms Amina said.
A total of 1,052,364 candidates sat the exam, up from 993,718 in 2017. The cohort included 527,294 boys and 525,070 girls, representing 50.1 per cent and 49 per cent respectively.
Ms Amina also said there would be no second selection for candidates joining secondary school, ending a practice that had been used in previous years. President Uhuru Kenyatta had hinted a day earlier that the results would be released early, and said on Sunday that all candidates would be absorbed into secondary schools before later moving on to universities and technical institutes.
Education Principal Secretary Belio Kipsang, KNEC chief executive officer George Magoha and Teachers Service Commission chief executive Nancy Macharia attended the release. Mvita MP Abdulswab Shariff was the only politician present.
In 2017, more than 9,000 candidates scored above 400 marks, underscoring the stronger top-end performance recorded that year compared with 2018.
The 2016 results had been described as low before the upward trend noted by the ministry in the 2018 release.
