Grade 10 Senior School Selection in Kenya to Commence on May 20, 2025

Grade 10 Senior School Selection in Kenya to Commence on May 20, 2025

Grade 9 students will start selecting their Senior Secondary Schools on May 20, as announced by the government.

The announcement was made on Thursday, April 24, by Education PS Julius Jwan while he spoke at the National Convention on Competency-Based Education at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre (KICC).

The PS stated that the process is starting early to facilitate a smooth transition for students from Junior Secondary School to Senior Secondary School, which commences at Grade 10.

“We have developed guidelines to transition our learners from Grade 9 to Grade 10. Beginning May 20, we will have our students begin their selections for senior schools,” he remarked.

Bitok further emphasized that, in contrast to previous years, the government is focused on utilizing technology during the selection procedure.

Schools will be classified according to pathways, including Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), Social Sciences (Humanities), Performing Arts, Music, and Athletics, per the Deputy Director of Education at the Ministry of Education, Fred Odhiambo.

Students will be required to select 12 schools during the selection process. Out of these, nine must be boarding schools, and of those nine, three must be from the student’s home county.

The remaining three school selections will necessarily be day schools located within the student’s home sub-county.

This was the latest significant announcement from the Ministry of Education, following just hours after CS Ogamba instructed that a certain level of mathematics be reintroduced as a mandatory subject in senior secondary schools.

Importantly, Mathematics, which was previously set to be an optional subject in SSS, will now be compulsory due to the directive issued by Education CS Julius Ogamba.

As per the CS, with this new directive, students who opt for the STEM pathway will engage in pure mathematics, while those on the other two pathways will have a simplified version of mathematics.

“We will have the STEM pathways covering pure maths, while the other two pathways will include a form of maths, ensuring that we have maths in all three pathways in senior school,” the CS clarified.

In contrast to the 8-4-4 curriculum, where mathematics was a required subject, the Ministry had directed that students in senior school would now have the option to drop the subject based on the pathway they selected.