The Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) has announced the Grade 9 first pilot assessment in readiness for their final Junior Secondary School (JSS) assessment next year. KNEC revealed that the exercise will kick off on July 15- 19, 2024 and targets about 5, 875 students across 235 JSS institutions.
The assessment will include both regular curriculum learners which are 5, 125 and special needs (750), with five schools selected per county.
Research, Innovation and Educational Assessment Resource Centre acting Deputy Director at KNEC Anne Ngatia revealed that there will be a variety of assessment formats.
“We have a variety of assessment formats. We will have multiple choices, and we will also have short structured questions where learners are expected to write their own responses. We will analyse the results afterward to see how they performed in this item format.
“We will have a learner questionnaire, which is the first time we are using it. We want to find out what their interests are. The purpose of this assessment is to help them choose their career pathways. The choice of career pathways should not be determined solely by the achievement tests we give but also by their interests and personality,” she said.
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At the same time, KNEC Chief Executive Officer David Njegere has said that learners in Grade 7 and 8 will be sitting for school-based assessments so as to ensure that they move away from high-stakes exams at the end of a cycle, which sometimes leads to malpractices witnessed in the other system.
“The score that the child gets during the pilot will be used solely for research purposes. It will not affect their formative or summative assessments, which means they don’t have to prepare as if they are sitting for an exam. We have asked teachers not to coach them, they just need to show up because we want to make it as natural as possible,” Njegere added.
There will be eight subjects in the pilot assessment including English Language, English (Composition and Literary Analysis), Kiswahili Lugha, Kiswahili (Insha na Utangulizi wa Fasihi), Kenyan Sign Language (KSL), Mathematics, Integrated Science, Agriculture & Nutrition, Religious Education (CRE, HRE, IRE), Creative Arts & Sports and Pre-Technical Studies.
By Vostine Ratemo
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