By Roy Hezron
All Secondary Schools Principals have been instructed to provide correct and accurate Form Four candidates’ contact information to the Kenya University and College Central Placement Services (KUCCPS),
In a circular dated August 24, 2022 and signed by the Principal Secretary in the State Department of Early Learning and Basic Education Dr. Julius Jwan, the Ministry of Education has stated that the support will enable KUCCPS to have a database with contact information details of all the candidates for ease of communication.
“KUCCPS intends to develop a database with contact information details of all the candidates. This will facilitate communication to the candidates and their parent and guardians, regarding school and center application, revision and any other relevant information, regarding government sponsorship,” stated Dr. Jwan in the Circular.
In order to expand placement opportunities to all the candidates under the government policy on transition from basic to higher education, KUCCPS normally requests schools to submit the candidates’ applications for placement to colleges and universities before they sit for their Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE).
On this all schools are required to create an account where principals apply for students’ placement to universities or colleges. Only the principal can submit the school applications and not individual students.
Despite it being a mandatory requirement for all candidates sitting KCSE exam to apply to KUCCPS for courses they wish to study in universities and middle-level colleges, a good number of principals do not send their students’ applications to the KUCCPS hence killing dreams of many of the students.
For instance in the placement report released on August 17, 2021 at KICD for the 2020 KCSE candidates, there was low participation by schools in course selection at the secondary school level whereby only 2, 506 schools (24 per cent) out of the 10,437 secondary schools that were registered examination centres in 2020, submitted their KCSE candidates’ choices.
The selection exercise for courses at colleges and universities usually begins at the school level where teachers, especially those in charge of career departments, are usually expected to guide their candidates to ensure they prudently select degree, diploma, certificate and artisan programmes depending on their choices and academic abilities.
Some high school head teachers do not make any applications to universities and tertiary colleges citing the anticipated poor academic performance of their institutions in national examinations while in some schools, principals select and register only top performers likely to score the minimum university entry grade of C+ and above and ignore those they deem to be poor performers.
