Grade 10: The placement crisis, anger, controversy and little known ‘commitment fee’

The yet to be concluded Grade 10 placement fiasco is a blot to behold in the new and perplexing CBE system of education in Kenya. With over one million candidates having sat for the Kenya Junior School Education Assessment (KJSEA) exams, a good number of Kenyan families were affected by the ongoing proceedings. 

Gone are the days when a father would advise his child, “My son or my daughter, you work hard, attain good grades and be admitted to a good school. As for school fees, that is my part; leave that for me.” Today, a child will work hard and get good grades, but the father will have to look for both the school and the school fees, plus the unofficial “commitment fee.”

The Senior School placement fiasco has resulted in widespread chaos, confusion, and anger among parents in Kenya with children in the novel Competency-Based Education (CBE). 

Students in their hundreds of thousands are facing issues of inappropriate schools, rejected appeals, assignment to distant schools, discrepancies with chosen pathways, high costs, and allegations of bribery. The unfolding drama has exposed systemic flaws and strained the goal of full transition from junior to senior school.

Strange tales are told by parents whose children are transitioning to grade 10 after the Kenya Junior School Education Assessment (KJSEA) exams.  

Take the case of Ms. Mbolo; she approached the administration of a well-known extra-county school and presented her niece’s result-slip, after she was initially placed in a day secondary school 500 kilometers from their humble abode at the coast. 

Her hard-working niece was preparing to join grade 10, having passed the KJSEA with “good grades,” for lack of a better term. How does one refer to “exceeding expectation or meeting expectation grading in KJSEA?) 

Semantics aside, how does one assess performance with this Likert-scale type of grading? At first, the school administration was reluctant and dismissed her request twice. When she went back the third time, they gave her a hearing and indeed said they were ready to admit her niece, but there was a catch: pay up fifteen thousand shillings upfront. 

This is a “commitment fee.” Once done, pick up your admission letter in the next office and just like “magic,” she paid, and the admission letter was given to her. In the national schools, two parents, Nick and Sam, spoke of steep “commitment fee” requests, as high as three hundred thousand. But the plot is the same, when a parent seems too desperate, they might just have the right medicine for you.

Many students across Kenya have endured days of uncertainty and confusion because many ended up being admitted in grade 10 in schools they had not applied to, in day secondary schools hundreds of kilometers away or finding an admission letter in a particular school the first time and within a few days, it had changed to a different school and at times to a third school within the next few days. It was traumatizing and confusing to both parents and students. 

Many parents are also at a loss about the issue of school ranking and what role it still plays in the choice and selection of students according to their performance. 

Recently, a prominent politician came out to allege that “national schools” from their region had been stuffed by students from another region, outside their community zone, and hence there was partiality in grade 10 placements. 

This did not go down well with politicians from the offending communities coalescing around each other to give rejoinders to such accusations, but the issue by itself gave rise to certain considerations which should be in the public knowledge. 

Under the CBE, is Alliance High a national school which caters for all meriting students across the land, or is it a ‘community’ school meant for the community around it only? Is Mangu High School a church-sponsored national school, or is it a community school meant only for the area in which it is located? 

If these have since changed status, to what extent are they community schools? Has the Catholic Church in Nairobi or elsewhere divested from the schools it used to sponsor? Has the government divested from the national schools it sponsors back to the community around the communities where these schools stand?

The unfolding scenario has seen the internal security docket announce that it will carry out nationwide door-to-door inspections in search of prospective senior school students who are yet to join Senior Secondary School and Junior Secondary Schools (JSS). 

In a statement last week, the Ministry of Education officials said 61 per cent of eligible learners have joined Senior Secondary, while 97 per cent of learners who completed Grade 6 have transitioned to JSS. The big question in the minds of public authorities is: where are the learners who have not reported to schools by the third week of January 2026? 

Will the same fate of high attrition rates that befell the now-defunct 8-4-4 system also befall the CBE system at birth? The Ministry is also planning for community sensitization forums through barazas, religious institutions, and local platforms to mobilize families and guardians to ensure learners report to school.  

The transition from Junior School to Senior School has been all but smooth. Whereas the government aimed for a 100% transition in Senior School, initial data collected shows a significant portion of the first cohort of senior school students are not in school as expected. Public authorities hope the various local bursaries and scholarships for vulnerable learners will minimize financial exclusion. 

The CBE system of education is slowly taking shape, but with a lot of challenges, including the ongoing placement crisis. 

The government needs to focus on delivering a high-quality education to all citizens by intensifying quality audits to ensure the integrity of the education system. The government should tackle hidden costs, such as for uniforms and supplies, which still exclude certain students. 

It is certain that the government of Kenya is trying to increase access to education and transition at all stages, but it now faces the critical challenge of ensuring that this expanded access translates into genuine, high-quality learning for all children.