The curtain has been lowered with the release of the first-ever Kenya Junior Secondary School Assessment (KJSEA) results, and what follows is yet another critical phase of placing the learners into the Grade 10 and senior schools.
As pledged by the PS of the Basic Education Ministry, Prof Julius Bitok, the exercise of placing learners in schools commenced immediately after the release of the results and is supposed to be completed before the Christmas festivities, ready for the opening of schools in January 2026.
At the same time, the PS announced that Grade 10 learners had been given another opportunity to change the senior schools they had chosen to join after their KJSEA results did not favour the studies they wanted to pursue.
The PS asked parents and guardians to consult with their children and education stakeholders on which careers students want to pursue during the extended period of changing the selection process.
This, according to PS Bitok, is to allow parents and guardians enough time to prepare the learners to move smoothly to the second phase of the new CBE.
Senior secondary learning will take three years, after which students will be identified for universities and TVTs, as the last lap of the education system.
Trans Nzoia had two traditional national schools – St Joseph’s Boys and St Brigid’s Girls before St Anthony’s Boys was added to the bracket this year as the Ministry of Education (MoE) sought to expand vacancies in readiness for Grade 10 intake.
According to statistics, the three national schools renamed under the C1 group have space and facilities to accommodate about 9,000 Grade 10 students in a single year.
The schools are expected to cover the three pathways of the studies- STEM, Arts and Sports, and Social Science.
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When releasing the KJSEA results, Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogambo said the Grade 10 intake has been grouped into four bands and that all learners who sat for the exams will move to senior secondary schools that have the capacity to accommodate at least 1.3 million students.
And with Trans Nzoia having about 210 secondary schools and the high number of Grade 9 leavers, parents are expected to scramble for Grade 10 vacancies in public schools, with their eyes on the local three national secondary schools.
St Joseph’s Boys. St Brigids’ and St Anthony’s have set records in both academics and extracurricular activities.
For example, St Joseph’s Boys and St Anthony Boys, placed under the C1 wing of the CBE system, are traditional names in the field of soccer, sending their students to the competitive world of football in Europe and the United States.
And for St Brigid’s Girls, the school has consistently ranked among the top ten KCSE performers, sending a warning to other giants like Mang’u, Alliance (both boys and girls), Kapsabet Boys, Kabaraka Schools, Kamusinga, Starehe, Maseno, and Moi Girls Eldoret.
The C1 group of schools is supposed to admit KJSEA students from the Exceeding Expectation EE1 cluster with marks ranking between 69 and 71 points.
Those in the Meeting Expectations ME, Approaching Expectations AE, and Below Expectations BE will join extra-county, county, and sub-county schools in that order.
The MoE said 75 percent of all KJSEA candidates were placed in the EE1 and EE2 categories.
The debate over the demand for Trans Nzoia learners to be accommodated at St Joseph’s Boys, St Anthony Boys, and St Brigid was sparked by the area governor, George Natembeya, who proposed creating more streams for local learners.
This was followed by the Trans Nzoia Parents Teachers Association (PTA) which claimed that the local students were disadvantaged in the three learning institutions when it came to the former Form 1 intake, currently Grade 10.
Speaking during one of the education forums in Kitale, Natembeya said that for Trans Nzoia to benefit from the local national secondary schools, local students should be given chances to learn from the C1 schools.
The various private secondary schools will have to supplement the Grade 10 learners.
By Abisai Amugune
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