Mombasa produces two top candidates

By Dorothy Otieno and Sam Otieno

Mombasa District produced the top two candidates and claimed eight positions in the top 20.

Monica Wairimu Mutinda of Hill Gate Academy was the top candidate with 460 marks an improvement of last year’s top marks of 455 marks by Michael Mutava Mulie and Solomon Maina Aduol.

The school also produced the top boy, Martin Mzera who scored 454 marks and placed second nationally.

Eleven candidates from Hill Gate were among the top 30 candidates.

Teing in second place with the top boy was Catriona Akinyi Onyango from Western Province.

This is the first time since 2002 that a female candidate has topped the examination.

There were 46 girls and 54 boys in the top 100 candidates posting an improved performance by girls.

Taking the fourth position nationally was the top candidate from Nairobi, Yahya Sala Mohammed from Makini School, and Ngong Road with 454 marks. Nairobi had two other students in the top ten. These are Nixon Ounda from New Light Academy in Komarock and Ashley Muthoni of tender Care Junior Academy in Kayole.

Central Province had three candidates in the top ten with the top candidate Ndirangu Daniel from Nyeri Steiner with 450 marks in position nine, Western had two candidates in the top 10, Rift valley three while Nyanza and North Eastern did not feature in the top 20.

Like in previous years private schools dominated the top 100.

Releasing the results on Tuesday, Education Minister Prof Sam Ongeri said there was improved performance in five out of the eight papers compared to last year.

English Objective mean, improved from 40 per cent to 41 per cent, Kiswahili Objective 51 per cent to 57 per cent, Kiswahili Composition 43 per cent to 46 per cent, Social Studies 60 per cent to 61 per cent and Religious Studies 59 per cent to 60 per cent.

But there was a drop in performance in three papers, English composition 47 per cent to 42 per cent.

Candidates continued to perform dismally in Mathematics, which registered a further drop from 49 per cent last year to 47 per cent. After a significant improvement in Science last year, candidates performed poorly in the subject with a drop of 4 percent to 55 per cent.

The number of candidates who scored 250 marks and above this year was 346,885 representing about half the candidates compared to 339,709 of the total candidature last year.

The candidature dropped marginally to 695,732 compared to 704,918 last year.

The number of boys who registered for the examination was 367,085 and girls 328,647, a ratio of 52.8 per cent boys and 47.2 per cent girls.

Ongeri attributed the decrease of candidature to the stabilisation in enrolment after the upsurge realised when FPE was introduced.

Despite introduction of measures to stem cheating by the Kenya National Examination Council (Knec), unethical registration practices continued especially in some private schools.

The number of candidates involved in examination irregularities was 1835 from 65 centres compared to 1728 from 74 centres last year.

They involved cases where head teachers collude with proprietors of private schools to have their best students registered in selected private schools for better performance.

Private schools use ranking to attract students.

In other cases, low performers were registered in centres other than the schools they had been attending. "This is a form of child abuse which is not acceptable," said Ongeri.

For instance, a public primary school in Mombasa registered five of their best candidates in a neighbouring private school.

The minister warned that stern action would be taken against those who were involved in irregularities.

But the most disturbing cases took place in five refugee examination centres — Dadaab, Abdiaziz, Halane, Central and Alleys.

Ongeri said the candidates and communities in the neighbourhood made the administration of the examination ungovernable.

Some of the candidates refused to surrender their mobile phones which they were using during the exam, the start of the exams was delayed in some instances due to disturbances and crowds and marauding youths shouted answers to candidates and engaged security personnel in running battles when trying to stop them from interfering with the examination process.

Consequently, all the candidates in the affected centres had their results cancelled.

Given that 839 (46 per cent) of the candidates involved were from five refugee camps, there was a significant drop in the number of cases of examination irregularities from regular schools.

The 65 centres where candidates were involved in examination irregularities are distributed across the Country as follows: Coast Province 8, Central 1, Eastern 8, Nairobi 1, Rift Valley 11, Western 1, Nyanza 19 and North Eastern 16.

All the IDP candidates who had been affected by post election violence were settled by the ministry in regular schools except, 212 candidates who sat the examination in Eldoret IDP school and the top candidate scored 390 out of 500 marks.