Majority of 2017 KCSE candidates scored D plus and below

Nearly three-quarters of the candidates who sat the 2017 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) exam scored a D + (plus) and below.

Of the 615,772 candidates who wrote this year’s KCSE exam, 438,914 had a D plus and below with only 176,858 scoring a C minus and above, a jaw-dropping 71%.

Only 70,073 candidates attained the university entry grade of C+ and above compared to 88,929 the previous year.

In this year’s exam, 540,428 candidates (90%) scored between grade E and C plain compared to 482,232 last year.

A majority of the candidates (179,381) had a D minus, a mind blowing dismal performance that has raised eyebrows and formed debate on various fronts including the political sphere.

The Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) has asked the Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) to recall the 2017 KCSE results without further delay to allow for thorough auditing and moderation.

In a statement, KNUT Secretary General Wilson Sossion said the results “are not credible at all, they are irregular and most disastrous exam in the Kenya history, and do not meet the international standards of measurements and evaluation”.

“The results have destroyed the future of many children and hopes of many families and they are bound to destroy our public universities,” reads the statement in part.

“It is shameful as a nation that we are unable to supply the required 95,000 students as per existing vacancies in our universities, we can only supply 70,000. What happens with the remaining 25,000 available spaces, are all over 600,000 candidates total zombies?” posed Sossion.

On his part, opposition chief Raila Odinga demanded that the government set up a task force to look into the worrying trend of very low transition to university that has been witnessed in recent years.

“As the country commits resources to free learning and scales up enrollment, the whole purpose and value for money is lost when close to 90 per cent of those students eventually fail. The government must listen to the cries of the candidates, the parents and teachers’ unions on this matter,” said Odinga.

“The overall number of candidates with minimum university entry qualification, Grade C+ and above, stands at only 11.38 percent. Close to 90 per cent of the KCSE candidates have failed. This is very worrying. Our country needs skilled manpower to achieve its ambitious growth goals. Making the transition from high school to university is a significant, though not the only step, towards the realization of those national goals.”