Some 42,927 students who sat this year's Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE), which was the last, have been placed in national schools across the country.
Education Cabinet Secretary (CS) Ezekiel Machogu, who released the Form One selection results on Monday, said that out of students who earned slots in national schools, 22,051 are boys and 20,876 are girls.
Similarly, some 274,746 students will join extra county schools out of which 141,590 are boys and 133,156 are girls while 288,201 have been placed in county schools.
Sub-county schools have the highest number of form one entrants at 792,230 out of which 423,171 are boys and 369,059 are girls.
Another 2,225 learners will go to Special Needs Schools.
"In the placement, all candidates who scored 400 marks and above were placed in either national or extra county schools of their choice. Similarly, all other candidates were placed in county or sub-county schools, according to the parameters set. Learners with special needs were placed either in regular or Special Needs schools based on their disability categories, merit and choice," Machogu said while announcing the selection at Lenana School, Nairobi.
The Education CS also said that the ministry has continued to apply affirmative action to cater for the needy and vulnerable children in identified slums and informal settlements in urban areas.
This, he said, complied with the government’s policy of achieving parity in education.
"Through affirmative action, we managed to place 130 learners in national schools and 167 in extra county schools. This comprised 150 girls and 147 boys. Besides the affirmative action on needy and vulnerable children, the placement also considered the Djibouti Declaration of 2017 on Regional Refugee Education and placed learners from primary schools located within the refugee camps," the CS explained.
Machogu also stated that the choices made by the candidates themselves played a significant role in the outcome. Candidates were placed in schools largely based on merit and choice.
A few candidates, however, said could not be placed using the above criteria and were placed in schools of equivalent standing outside their counties.
"This number included those from counties with inadequate capacity. During the placement, my attention was drawn to a specific issue that is worthy of mention. Some candidates, despite having high scores, did not make any school choices," he explained.
A total of 28,052 candidates did not make choices of schools in various categories, comprising national 222, extra county 4,837, county 8,716 and sub-county 14,277. Among these were 683 candidates from the Wanjohi sub-county in Nyandarua and 330 from the Kopsiro sub-county in Bungoma County.
"This situation presented us with a dilemma, as we sought to ensure that every candidate had a placement that would enable them to continue their education seamlessly. A decision was
therefore reached to place these candidates in public sub-county secondary schools that were
nearest to their former primary schools," he said.
