Over 120,000 Form Four leavers picked for university programmes

A total of 128,073 students who sat their 2020 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) have been placed to pursue degree programs while 193,949,   have been placed to pursue Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET) programs

While announcing the placement results on Tuesday, Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha also revealed that a total of 6,617 students who had qualified to join university opted to pursue diploma courses of their choice inTVET institutions.

In the 2020 KCSE examinations, a total 142,540 candidates qualified for degree programmes, but only 134,690 (95 percent) applied for courses of their choice and were placed.

A total of 7,850 representing 5 percent did not apply for either degree courses or diploma courses through the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (Kuccps).

“However this is not to say that these students have missed placement to universities, some of them could have opted to pursue degree as self-sponsored students, while others might have received scholarships and therefore we cannot say they have missed university placement,” said Prof Magoha.

The number of students who qualified to join university in the last year’s exam also increased by 14 percent from the previous year.

In 2019, a total of 125,448 qualified to join universities while 146,193 were placed to join Tvet institutions.

This year, a total of 594,987 were eligible for placement into Diploma, Certificate, Craft and Artisan courses.

All the 137,072 applied for the available slots and all of them have been placed.

“The placement to TVET was open to all, including those from previous years up to the year 2000,” said Prof Magoha

In this year’s placement, Prof Magoha said the ministry noted that there was reluctance in some regions where most KCSE candidates failed to apply to join Tvets and universities.

The most affected regions were Mandera, Garissa and Wajir counties.

Prof Magoha said there were also cases of lack of proper guidance, end up selecting competitive courses in all the four expected slots.

In some instances, Prof Magoha said there were cases where a candidate selects a course in medicine in all the four options available.

“What this means is that should the candidate fail to meet 11 the minimum cluster points for the course, then he/she would have minimised chances of joining other competitive courses, which would also have been filled during the first selection. This ends up frustrating many candidates,” said the CS.