Over 55pc of candidates score D+ and below for eighth straight year

The proportion of students who scored D+ and below remained above 55 percent of the total candidate population for the eighth straight year, revealing the amount of work required to improve the outcomes.

Results of the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination released on Monday showed that 494,317 candidates achieved either a D+ or below out of the total 895,533 candidates who were graded, representing 55.2 percent of the candidates.

While 903,138 registered for the exam, 899,453 sat for the test but the results of 4,113 were held on irregularities.

Despite being a small reduction of 0.5 percentage points from the previous year, the improvement is overshadowed by the huge number of students getting D+ and below remaining above 55 percent since the reforms of 2016 when Fred Matiang’i was the Education Cabinet Secretary.

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A further analysis reveals that the number of students who scored E rose to 48,174, representing 5.4 percent of total candidates in 2023 from 30,822 in 2022 and 3.5 percent of candidates then.

Education CS Ezekiel Machogu said the big number of Es was painful even after the ministry changed the grading system, tying it to two as opposed to the previous five compulsory subjects.

By gender composition, the number of male students who scored D+ and below were 249,281 while females stood at 245,036.

On the flip side more than 201,133 students achieved direct university entry grades, the highest ever, representing slightly over a fifth of the total population.

The number of female candidates scoring A, A-, B+ went up by close to a third to 10,881, faster than their male counterparts that rose by five percent to 15,667 from 14,898 previously.

The number that scored A-plain grew by 70 to stand at 1,216, the highest since 2015.

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