New national schools find the going very tough

Some newly created national schools have recorded the worst performance in last year’s Form Four national examinations whose results were released on Friday.

At least 10 of them performed so poorly that they could not qualify to be ranked among the top 100 district schools.

On average, eight of the 75 national schools that registered candidates in last year’s Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examination will not send a single student to university based on their performance mean.

The worst of the newly elevated institutions was NEP Girls in Garissa whose performance index was 18 per cent.

That means all its candidates, on average, obtained a mean grade of D plain, considered a failure in the exams.

A candidate who scores a D plain would, on average, have scored only three points in each of the seven subjects sat.

The maximum that any candidate can score is 12 to be ranked as having obtained an A plain.

Other new national schools that performed poorer than the top 100 districts schools included Isiolo Girls’ High which had a performance index of 22.5 (D).

Others were Moi Girls’ Secondary – Marsabit with a performance mean of 26.6, Garissa High (34.7) and Shimo La Tewa (39).

The national schools’ poor show means a lot is needed to turn them into academic giants that can rival well established ones like Alliance Boys, which had a performance index of 75.2.

This implies most candidate had, on average, obtained a mean of A minus.

Some new national schools, however, performed well beating established nationals. They included Maranda, Pangani and Karima Girls.

Maranda was ranked fourth in the nationals category.

The performance was, however, a drop for the Nyanza-based school, which led the national charts in the 2011 KCSE exam results.

Pangani Girls, Nairobi, emerged in position 13 among national schools and 23 nationally. The school recorded a performance index of 72.8, despite registering 276 candidates.

“A record 129 of our candidates scored mean grades of A and A-, the highest in our KCSE history,” principal Prisca Nyambongi said of the school’s high quality grades.

Kapsabet Boys in Nandi, Nyanza’s Kanga High and Eastern’s Meru High were some of the new national schools that performed well.

Kamusinga from Western Kenya, which has been performing excellently, slid down the tables standing at position 45 nationally.

It was ranked 20 among national schools with a performance index of 68.2.

Buru Buru Girls’ High School in Nairobi, which is a provincial school, recorded its best ever performance in last year’s examination results. The school had 48 A plain and A- grades and 58 students scored B+.

Recently, the government set aside Sh25 million to each of the national schools targeting to improve teaching and learning facilities in the institutions.
In total, Sh750 million was set aside for the purpose.

Since then, however, the government has announced fresh plans to increase the number of national schools from the current 78 to 105 in what could mean more challenges for the new institutions.

In the exams, 298,560 candidates obtained mean grades of D+ and above, considered to be the pass grade in the exams.

The number represented an increase from 292,321 of those who scored the same grades in the 2011.

Nationally a total of 123,704 candidates scored a mean grade of C+ and above, scores that make them legible to pursue university education.

The number is the highest in the history of the KCSE examination, which was first sat in 1989.

In the 2011 national examinations, 119,658 candidates obtained a mean grade of C+ and above.

Of the candidates who scored less than D+, 6,600 candidates scored grade E in the exams.

The candidates with lower grades are expected to join technical colleges and institutes, many of which have been taken up by the rapidly expanding public universities.