Private schools demand review of Form One intake

By Augustine Oduor                                     

Kenya: Private schools have raised the red flag over the Form One selection process to national schools. 

They demanded a review of the selection method to ensure that candidates are allocated space in top secondary schools depending on the marks they obtained.

 They want Form One slots in the coveted national schools to be allocated on merit and say the current selection process that gives public schools with a large number of registered candidates more slots is discriminatory.

 Kenya Private Schools Association (Kepsa) chief executive officer Peter Ndoro said yesterday that  the formula used in 2012 discriminated against many private candidates and noted that this time, transparency and merit should be key.

 The selection for  16,000 Form One students in the 79 national schools is set to begin on January 14, while those of country and district schools will follow later, the Ministry of Education announced when it released results of last year’s KCPE exams on Tuesday.

 At present,   40 per cent of the slots in each county school are reserved for candidates from the host county. Another 40 per cent is reserved for schools in other counties while the remaining 20 per cent are reserved for candidates from the host district.

Over 200,000 of the 839,759 students who sat last year’s KCPE will miss Form One places.

 Private schools were allocated 7,000 places during the 2012/2013 Form One selection, translating to 46 per cent of the first form slots.

Education Cabinet Secretary Prof Jacob Kaimenyi said an additional 27 schools have been elevated to national status but noted that they would recruit their first candidates next year when their transformation to national schools is complete.

Meanwhile, all the irregularitiy cases reported in Bungoma County in the KCPE examination results occurred in private schools.

Involved in cheating

Seventy-six candidates from five schools who sat the national examinations will not get their results after they were allegedly involved in cheating.

The schools are: Chebwek SDA Academy in Cheptais district where 12 out of 18 pupils were involved in irregularities in Kiswahili.

Sixteen out of 17 pupils of Milo Central Academy in Webuye East will also not get their results after being involved in cheating in the same subject. And 19 out of 21 pupils of Nabongo Junior Academy and 12 out of 18 candidates of Marble Academy both in Bungoma town were involved in irregularities in English.