KCPE 2023 PLACEMENT

2024 Form One Selection and placement exercise was undertaken to ensure smooth transition from primary to secondary schooling for the 2023 KCPE Examination candidates.

This process has been carried out in a way that ensured fairness in the placement of KCPE Examination candidates of 2024. The placement was based on choice, merit and availability of places.

The 2023 KCPE Examination candidates constitute the 7th and last cohort of learners under the 8-4-4 system to be admitted to secondary schools under the Government’s policy of 100% transition.

The Ministry of Education is committed to ensure that parents/guardians with learners joining Form One are not overburdened with unnecessary requirements.

Principals should exercise caution while listing the requirements so that the cost of education is reduced as much as possible. Principals should ensure that no student is sent away from school over illegal levies.

Focus on the placement of 2023 KCPE candidates.

The Ministry has placed all eligible candidates appropriately in secondary schools in keeping with the 100% transition policy. This selection process was strictly guided by the principles of merit, choice, equity and availability of space in placing candidates.

This was conducted as follows:

S.NO	CATEGORY	FEMALE	MALE	TOTAL
1	County	107,461	91,566	199,027
2	Extra County	111,105	117,055	228,160
3	National	18,794	20,178	38,972
4	SNE	871	948	1,819
5	Sub County	372,459	387,203	762,610
	Total	610,690	616,950	1,230,588

In the placement, all candidates who scored 400 marks and above were placed in National or Extra County schools of their choice. The Special Needs Education candidates were also placed in the regular schools of their preference, while others were placed in special schools based on their disability categories on merit and choice.

Affirmative Action in Slums

The Ministry has applied affirmative action to achieve equity for children from the slum areas. In this year’s selection, 270 students from slum areas were placed in national and extra-county schools of their choice.

This is in addition to those placed through merit and other criteria. This intervention is in line with the government policy to achieve parity in education by considering the needy and vulnerable children in informal settlements in urban areas.

Placement of Refugees

For the first time, the Ministry placed 9,019 learners from primary schools located in the refugee camps in public secondary schools. This is in line with the 2017 Djibouti declaration on Regional Refugee Education that stipulates the need to enhance capacity of IGAD member states to implement commitments to quality education and learning for refugees and host communities.

Counties with limited capacities

The following Counties had inadequate capacities according to their candidature as indicated in the table.

S.N O

COUNTY

NO. OF

SCHOOLS

CAPACITY

KCPE

CANDIDATURE

DEFICIT

Nairobi

109

27,145

72,232

45,087

Kilifi

164

31,258

41,470

10,212

Mombasa

12,801

22,360

9,559

Kajiado

20,640

25,605

4,965

Turkana

12,096

16,796

4,700

Garissa

7,273

9,908

2,635

Kwale

104

22,633

24,442

1,809

Taita Taveta

6,768

8,477

1,709

Kitui

449

41,184

42,262

1,078

Narok

171

33,360

34,262

902

Tana River

5,232

6,035

803

Baringo

176

18,144

18,757

613

West Pokot

185

16,178

16,687

509

Lamu

3,264

3,760

496

To mitigate the shortfall, candidates were placed in other counties with sufficient capacities.

The above scenario can be considered an eye-opener to an underlying problem that calls for serious early redress in the wake of CBC.

It is against this background that the Education CS will take a personal initiative to consult with leadership from these areas to address this perennial deficit in capacity.