Form One selection begins as row over criteria persists

The Form One selection exercise is set to start Friday morning at the Kenya Institute of Education amid anxiety over how the vacancies in the 48 national secondary schools will be filled.

The Ministry of Education has upheld last year’s district quota formula to fill the 10,517 national positions in which pupils from public schools get more slots than those in private school.

Last year, of the 4,517 slots that were available for national schools, 1,224 were allocated to private schools while 3,293 went to public school pupils.

Given that the 73:27 per cent ratio (public: private) would be maintained this year, 7,677 vacancies will go to public primary school pupils while those in private schools will take up the remaining 2,840 vacancies.

Already, the Kenya Private Schools Association (KPSA) has opposed this criterion arguing that — just as was the case last year — it is discriminatory.

“We are preparing to go to court to seek that this ratio is repealed since admission should be based on merit as opposed to the type of school one went to,” said John Kabui, the KPSA chairman.

In January last year, the association moved to court on the same grounds but did not succeed since the government went ahead with selection of pupils to national schools.

The district quota system for national schools involves a complex formula in which the total number of pupils in a district is divided by that of the entire country and then multiplied by the vacancies available.

The figure arrived at represents the national school slots available for each district with the final selection based on the public-private school ratio .

The move was meant to address concerns that pupils from public schools, who are presumed to be disadvantaged in terms of education facilities and social background, were losing out in national school admissions.

On Thursday, the Education secretary George Godia said that most top performers in each county would be selected to the national schools.

“The creation of 6,000 new Form One slots has lessened the stiff competition that used to exist before,” Prof Godia said.

Last year, 5,806 students scored more than 400 marks in the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examinations, more than double the 2,723 who scored the mark the previous year – meaning they will be eligible for admission to national schools.

Selection of students to be admitted to county schools – previously called provincial schools – will take place soon after the national one is completed.

This too involves a formula where 40 per cent of the slots in the county schools will be reserved for candidates hailing from the regions the school are situated.

Another 40 per cent of their students will come from the counties while the remaining 20 per cent will be selected from the district level.

This year, the number of those who will miss slots in secondary school is expected to be higher given that candidates who sat for the KCPE examinations last year were 775,000.

This figure was much higher than that the 746,400 recorded in 2009 where only 478,732 students were admitted to secondary schools.
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