The Ministry of Education on Tuesday, January 24, introduced a new national assessment test for Junior Secondary School (JSS) students seeking to transition to Senior Secondary School (SSS).
In a statement seen by Kenyans.co.ke, the Kenya Junior Secondary Education Assessment (KJSEA) will involve a certification or transitional report at the end of Grade 9.
For learners with special needs, the assessment test is referred to as Kenya Pre-Vocational Level Education Assessment (KPLEA).
At JSS and pre-vocational level, the test will include both formative and summative assessment; whereby a student will be measured during his course of study and also at the tail end of the JSS curriculum.
"The formative assessment will be offered in form of School Based Assessments (SBA) while the summative assessment will take the form of national assessment," the statement from Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu read in part.
According to the Ministry, the outcomes from both formative and summative assessments will contribute to the final reporting at the end of Grade 9 at a ratio to be determined by the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC).
KNEC will also provide guidelines for the standardised SBA for students in Grades 7,8 and 9. This means that teachers will score the learner’s work in all subjects using the scoring guides provided by KNEC and provide immediate feedback to the learners at the school level.
The scores for each student will be uploaded to the KNEC Assessment portal at the end of each year.
Thereafter, KNEC will analyse the SBA for each grade and provide a comprehensive national report showing the students' national performances as well as how they performed in each subject.
CS Machogu highlighted that the report will be vital to highlight areas that need intervention and give specific recommendations to the education stakeholders.
At the end of Grade 9, KNEC will administer a national summative assessment whereby the scores for SBA and the summative assessment for each student will be combined to generate a final score. The results will then be used to guide the placement of learners in the different pathways in SSS.
The Ministry advised Heads of all Junior Secondary Schools to ensure that students from their institutions are registered and assigned an assessment number after having proven that they undertook Kenya Primary School Education Assessment (KPSEA) at the Grade 6 level.
Pre-Vocational candidates are also required to prove that they undertook Kenya Intermediate Level Education Assessment (KILEA) at the Intermediate level.
Grade System
KNEC will adopt four-level performance criteria for JSS students whereby Level 1 indicates the lowest performance and Level 4 is the highest performance. For special needs students, the highest performance rating will be Level 3.
Subjects to be Assessed
The core subjects to be assessed include English, Kiswahili, Mathematics, Integrated Science, Health Education, Pre-Technical and Pre-career Education, Social Studies and Religious Education.
