Kenya makes progress on gender parity in education, but challenges remain in 2023
Gender parity has continued to improve in the 8-4-4 system and the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE), with its best period being between 2013 and 2022, culminating in a slight drop in the near-parity this year.
This year’s examination results, released Thursday, had a gender parity slightly in favour of boys at 51.30 per cent against girls at 48.70 per cent.
According to the Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu, in 1985 when the first KCPE candidates sat their exams, the country had a low gender parity favouring males at 59.2 per cent against females at 40.8 per cent, a scenario that has now significantly improved.
‘Nearly equal’
“Encouragingly, from 2013 to 2022, the country achieved nearly equal gender parity for male and female candidates,” Mr Machogu noted when he released the results at Mitihani House in Nairobi yesterday.
Mr Machogu revealed that, since the introduction of the 8-4-4 system, over 26 million candidates have sat the KCPE exam.
During the 2023 KCPE Examination, a total of 1,406,557 candidates sat the exams in 28,533 centres across the country. Of these candidates, 721,544 (51.30 per cent) were male, and 685,017 (48.70 per cent) were female.
In the released results, 10 counties noted a disparity in gender representation with more boys than girls taking the test.
In Mandera, 62.77 per cent of the candidates were male while 37.23 per cent were female, Garissa had 61.47 per cent male and 38.53 per cent female, Turkana (57.00 per cent male, 43.00 per cent female), Wajir (56.91 per cent male, 43.09 per cent female), Machakos (52.79 per cent male, 47.21 per cent female).
The data goes on to show that 52.40 per cent of the candidates in Nyamira, were male while 47.60 per cent were female, Samburu had 52.39 per cent male and 47.61 per cent female, Baringo (52.13 per cent male, 47.87 per cent female), Nandi (52.05 per cent male, 47.95 per cent female), and Makueni (52.03 per cent male, 47.97 per cent female) .
Mr Machogu further revealed that the performance of male and female candidates was comparable in social studies and religious education, indicating a balanced achievement between genders in these subjects.
However, female candidates exhibited a slightly better performance than their male counterparts in English, Kiswahili, and Kenyan Sign Language.
“Male candidates performed slightly better than their female counterparts in mathematics and science,” the CS said.
