Anxiety High Over Form One Selection As Parents Call Upon MoE Fearness During The Exercise.
As the time for form selection and placement approaches, parents and KCPE 2021 candidates have expressed their fear that thousands may miss schools of their choice as it has been previously.
The candidates and parents have shifted their focus to scramble for Form One slots.
The selection and placement exercises is giving parents headache ahead of the launch of the scheduled time by the ministry of education.
Candidates who scored 380 marks above are hoping to be placed in prestigious national and extra county schools despite congestion at the institutions. Over the past five years, schools have been receiving double capacity in an effort to accommodate all Class Eight leavers.
This year, 34,839 more pupils sat the 2021 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) and are expected to join Form One under the 100 percent transition policy from primary to secondary schools excluding inmates, overage candidates and those from refuge camps.
Speaking in Mombasa where he attended the 24th Surgical Society of Kenya conference yesterday, Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha announced that the Form One selection will begin in two weeks’ time.
“We shall ensure that all Kenyan children are given equal, fair and just treatment, including those in the slums and far-flung areas,” said the CS.
Prof Magoha said many candidates joining Form one will want to join national schools, yet such institutions might have only 500 slots each with close to 12,000 students scoring over 400 marks.
A total 11,857 candidates scored between 400 and 500 marks compared to 8,091 in 2020. Those who scored between 300 marks and 399 are 315,275, compared to the 282,090 who scored the same marks in 2020, increasing the number by 33,185 students.
A further 578,197 have scored between 200 and 299 marks compared to the 589,027 candidates under the same category in 2020.
According to the Ministry’s data, majority of the pupils who scored 400 marks and above last year were placed in national and extra-county schools of their choice.
The Ministry uses affirmative action to place students in national schools, where the top five candidates of either gender from every sub-county placed in national schools on the basis of the choices they made during registration for the KCPE exam.
Last year’s data shows that some 36,254 students were placed in national schools, 201,077 in extra-county schools, 213,591 in county schools, 1,827 were to join special needs schools, while 718,516 were placed in sub-county schools. The ministry used affirmative action to place students from slums in urban areas to national and extra-county schools.
Prof Magoha said some candidates had only themselves to blame for not being placed in the schools of their choices because their selection was poor, adding, they only picked national schools and left out selecting extra-county and county ones.
While releasing the results, Prof Magoha had assured that all candidates woAnxiety High Over Form One Selection As Parents Call Upon MoE Fearness During The Exercise
