Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu has raised concerns after the number of candidates who scored below 99 marks in the 2023 KCPE tripled compared to the 2022 KCPE exams.
While delivering his speech at Mtihani House on Thursday, the CS explained that 2,060 candidates scored below 99 marks, as compared to 724 students who registered the same performance in the 2022 KCPE exams.
He also noted that those who scored above 400 marks had slightly dropped from the previous year, declining from 9,443 to 8,523.
Overall, candidates who scored between 100 and 199 marks increased from 296,336 to 383,025 in the current year.
The majority of students fell within the 200 - 299 category, as they rose from 619,583 candidates in the 2022 KCPE to 658,278 candidates.
352,782 candidates scored between 300 - 399 marks - an increase from 307,756 students who were in the same category in 2022.
According to Machogu, English, English Composition, and Kenyan sign language, all recorded significant improvement compared to KCPE 2022 - with female candidates performing better in these than their male counterparts.
The remaining subjects, including Mathematics, Sciences, and Kiswahili, recorded a slight decline in performance.
"My mission is to celebrate and remind that we're transitioning from a system that served us well in the past four decades to one that will serve us better," Machogu stated.
The CS released the 2023 KCPE results, marking the end of an era of the final KCPE examination under the 8-4-4 system.
1,406,557 candidates sat the exams, out of which 721,544 were male and 685,017 were female.
205 candidates who were not registered were still allowed to sit the exams to effect the 100 per cent transition policy.
Further, CS Machogu added that over 9,000 candidates who had not sat the KCPE exams would take a special examination in January 2024.
"To ensure that no candidate misses out on joining Form One, the Ministry of Education will conduct thorough mapping of any of those who may have failed to sit their examination this year in order to administer a Special Exam in January 2024,” the CS stated.
