Fredrick Odiero
Established academic giants in Nyanza region posted less impressive outcomes on the national arena in the just released 2021 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) results compared to the previous year.
Leading the charts were Maranda School, Maseno National School, Kanga High School, Kisii High and Mbita High, which had also registered huge enrollments.
Compared to the previous results, some schools in the region posted impressive results as most of the candidates attained the minimum university entry grade of C+ (plus).
Maranda, which topped the 2011 KCSE under the tutelage of chief principal Boaz Owino, led the pack with 30 candidates scoring A plain, 141 (A-), 139 (B+), 108 (B), 83 (B-) and 59 (C+). Out of a total of 621 learners, Only 61 scored less than C+.
However, the school’s overall performance dropped to a mean score of 9.1 compared to 9.7 achieved in the 2020 exam, as the number of those with A plain grades dropped proportionally by 18 from 48 in 2020.
Mbita High School, Agoro Sare High Shool, Orero Boys and Asumbi Girls emerged top performers in 2021 KCSE in Homa Bay County.
Mbita High School had a mean score of 9.16. This is an improvement from 8.9 points in the 2020 KCSE.
The National School had 15 students with A plain, A- (83), B+ (72), B (62), B- (58), C+ (29), C(23), C- (5), D+ (2), D (2).
Principal Kennedy Ojijo attributed the superb results to proper planning, which started four years ago.
Ojijo said they had set a target of 9.4 right at the start when the students joined form one.
“We have missed our target by 0.24 but what is important is that we almost achieved it. We began working on the target when the students joined form one,” Ojijo said.
At Agoro Sare High School in Rachuonyo South Sub-county, 14 candidates got A plain while 117 got A- (minus). The remaining 279 did not get their results as there were challenges of retrieval.
The principal James Momanyi said they were working round the clock to retrieve the results of the remaining students.
“I am very proud that we are taking a huge number of students to university. The process of retrieving the results is tedious but we will get all of them by the end of the day,” Momanyi said.
At Orero Boys, four students whose results had been retrieved by Saturday had A plain. Orero Principal Dickens Bula said they expected good results.
“We are still retrieving the results but the ones we already got point to a good performance,” Bula said.
Asumbi Girls, which is also a national school, had a mean score of 8.812. Two candidate scored A plain, A- (58), B+ (107), B (107), B- (98), C+ (53),
C(28), C- (3), D+ (1).
Principal Linet Sati attributed the results to discipline among her students.
“Discipline is key to achieving academic excellence. It is hard work that has enabled majority of our candidates to achieve the university grade,” Ms Sati said.
Candidates who sat their KCSE exams at Oriwo Boys High School in Karachuonyo Constituency failed to get their results after they were withheld.
At the Kisumu Boys School, the principal Eric Duya said they expected to do well after provisional results indicated they had two A plains.
It was the same case with the nearby Kisumu Girls where the school recorded some A plains for the first time in five years.
Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) results for 2021 were officially released on Saturday by education CS George Magoha.
While releasing the results at the Kenya National Examinations Council headquarters, the CS noted that although there were more candidates qualifying for university admission and other tertiary training colleges, the percentage proportion of those who passed is smaller than in 2020.
“The percentage of candidates with mean Grade of C+ and above has declined from 19.03 percent in 2020 to 17.49 percent in 2021,” he said.
