A head teacher in Kisumu has shared with parents a list of activities that candidates of the just ended Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examination should give priority before results are released.
Xaverian Primary School head George Polo says the learners who completed their national exam this week should be allowed to relax and rest after a period of breakneck speed.
Mr Polo said the period leading to the national exam was “very tiring for both teachers and learners,” partly with tight early morning and late evening regimes as the learners revised for the test.
Starting with television, the teacher asked parents to “persuade” the teenagers to watch programmes that would make them fluent in languages, improve on etiquette, and watch documentaries on wildlife, history, sports and “intellectual movies only for their age”.
News and music would also be important “to light up their moods,” the teacher said to the parents of the more than 200 candidates who sat for the exam at the school that is known for producing stellar KCPE results in the region. Other top-performers in the county are Victoria Primary, MM Shah, Arya Primary and Golden Elites.
He asked parents to encourage reading and buy books whose stories inspire and improve vocabulary. “Be careful with your child’s engagements to avoid them being exposed to the wrong and bad influence,” he told parents on WhatsApp. For house chores, Mr Polo challenged parents to give the children only age-appropriate duties.
He warned parents not to lose a child to “bad company at this age due to your lack of care and control,” assuring that the learners would pass and be admitted to “a good government secondary school”.
When the exams ended on Wednesday with social studies and religious studies, Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha said the results would be released in two weeks, explaining that marking of the papers started on Day One of the test on March 7.
Prof Magoha said: “All the papers done in Nairobi have already been marked. This will continue as scheduled and results will be out after 14 days”.
The number of 2021 candidates rose to 1,225,507 from 1,191,752 a year earlier with exam centres averaging 28,000.
In 2020, the best candidate — Faith Mumo — scored 433 marks out of a possible 500, which was lower than the leading mark of 440 in 2019.
After the results are released in the last week to end of March, the candidates and their benefactors will have about one month to prepare for joining secondary schools that are categorised into four: national, extra-county, county and sub-county.
For the 2020 KCPE class, Nanyuki High School whose motto is ‘Bidii Huleta Ushindi’ (Kiswahili for ‘Commitment wins’) got the highest number of applicants, attracting 154,524 requests against a capacity of 384 chances. This was more than 400 times the capacity declared.
It was followed by Kabianga that attracted 142,160 applications, Pangani followed with 124,598 while Nyandarua High had 123,688. Alliance Girls got 105,053 applications as Maseno had 104,581 and Nakuru High 100,840.
Others that also turn heads are Alliance High, Kapsabet Boys, Pangani, The Kenya High, and Mang’u. Starehe Boys is also a top-performing school, but has been losing its shine over the years.
Kenya, like the rest of the world, was thrust into a difficult learning period due to the Covid-19 pandemic that jolted in-person activities, ruining school calendars. This year, Kenya will administer two KCPE and Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations each, the second in November.
This turbulence in learning forced a painful fees payment schedule on families due to a crash programme that the Ministry of Education crafted with the goal of returning to the normal January-December school calendar next year.
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