Education secretary Amina Mohamed links flopping to learners’ inability to apply practical skills.
Ms Mohamed on Thursday told Parliament that marking of the exams was handled professionally and within set timeframes.
More than 540,000 of the total 610,501 students who sat the exams failed to attain the minimum C+ grade required for admission to university.
A total of 35,536 students flatly failed the exam having scored the lowest grade E.
Education secretary Amina Mohamed has linked the mass failure of last year’s Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) candidates to inability of most students to apply practical skills.
Ms Mohamed on Thursday told Parliament that marking of the exams was handled professionally and within set timeframes.
More than 540,000 of the total 610,501 students who sat the exams failed to attain the minimum C+ grade required for admission to university. A total of 35,536 students flatly failed the exam having scored the lowest grade E.
“Examiners say the poor performance was due to inability of students to respond to questions requiring practical skills,” Ms Mohamed told the National Assembly Committee on Education, Research and Technology chaired by Julius Melly (MP Tinderet).
Upon validation by Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS), available university vacancies for 2018 are 98,703. The figure includes 81,038 slots in public and 17,665 in private universities. This means that the available slots are more than the 70,073 candidates who attained grade C+ and above in the exams.
Nominated MP Wilson Sossion sought to know what measures the government had put in place to ensure the vacancies are filled.
“What we are doing is that students will be admitted on the basis of their choice. Basically, it is the students that will be calling the shots,” said John Muraguri, the KUCCPS chief executive.
He explained that the remaining vacancies will be filled by applicants who sat KCSE in previous years as well as foreigners. The Kenya National Examinations Council (Knec) cancelled results for 1,205 candidates over cheating in the 2017 KCSE.
The council said 64 exam centres engaged in malpractices, with investigations establishing that the culprits either carried unauthorised materials to exam rooms or colluded to cheat.
Five candidates who were caught engaging in exam malpractices were disqualified.
Knec temporarily banned appeals by affected candidates saying they can register for the 2018 examination.
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