By Michael Oduor
Dr. Aggrey High School in Wundanyi, Taita Taveta County, is taking 98 per cent of its 2022 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) candidates to university, only four students shy of a hundred per cent transition having attained a pulsating 8.6765 mean score to outperform giant schools in the region.
The extra-county school, which had an entry of 240 candidates, attained a mean grade of B plain, taking 236 to university that marks a new turn in academic excellence in the history of the school.
According to the provisional results, the school managed to get 2 straight As, 6 A-, 40 B+, 84 B, 74 B-, 28 C+ and 4 C to begin a legacy that may outlast any competition in the education realms.
Speaking to Education News, the school Deputy Principal Morekwa Nyakundi noted that the results did not come as a surprise and that they were expecting good performance.
“Of course, these results were expected. Initially we had made a target of 8.1, which we had revised from 9.3. We thank God that we have been able to achieve the mean score,” said Nyakundi.
According to him, the mean of 8.6 is the highest in the history of the school.
He admits that it was not a walk in the park, having had to first identify the potential in each candidate before pushing them hard to ensure they performed better to attain a university grade.
The school also went an extra mile after covering the syllabus early to embark on serious internal mocks and revisions.
“We usually have a system of early syllabus coverage and rigorous continuous assessment programmes before infusing several mock exams. We also went further to see what other best schools in the country do in their exams,” he explained.
Further, he relates the exemplary performance to the discipline of the students.
“The boys have been very cooperative and disciplined. We had a few challenges here and there but they have never been a big hindrance to achieve our target,” he said.
The school had been gradually improving, culminating in the excellent performance in 2022 that had all subjects taking a positive index, with Agriculture and Sciences doing extremely well.
In 2021, their mean score was 7.4532 (C+) with a university transition rate of 74.88% (152 students) – which was higher than the previous year where it stood at 70.88%, or 112 students.
According to the English Head of Department (HoD) Pauline Harman, the students excelled in English as a result of frequent practice.
“The boys did quite well in the 2022 exams and we are so happy about it. What made us do well particularly in English is a lot of practice, especially in paper 3 in which most students have a challenge,” said Harman.
She attributed the overall success and improved performance in her subject to the support they got from the school administration, as well as the cooperation the students showed.
She also noted that despite the challenges experienced, the zeal and determination that the students and teachers had took them to the great heights they had reached.
“It was a tough year but the boys managed. The zeal that the boys and the teachers had has brought us where we are and we are grateful for that,” she said.
Yet the school can improve even further if some hurdles are cleared, top among them understaffing that has forced them to balance off with Board of Management (BoM) employees.
“We have a big challenge as about half of our teachers are under the school board. Only 27 out of 48 teachers are employed by the government. We urge the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) to add us more to facilitate learning in the school,” said Nyakundi.
