Girls outperform boys in languages but trail in maths and sciences
Female candidates outperformed their male counterparts in languages in the 2021 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) exams, Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha has said.
Prof Magoha, who released the KCPE results yesterday, said male candidates performed slightly better than their female counterparts in Kenyan Sign Language, Mathematics, Science and Social Studies and Religious Education.
“In terms of gender, the performance of male and female candidates was comparable,” said the CS.
Generally, the CS said there was improved performance in six KCPE papers compared to last year.
He said that improvement was recorded in English Composition, Kiswahili Lugha, Kiswahili Insha, Kenyan Sign Language Composition, Science and Social Studies.
Drop in performance
Three other papers, Mathematics, English Language and Religious Education, however, recorded a drop in performance in 2021 compared to 2020, while Kenyan Sign Language recorded a comparable performance in the same period.
However, female candidates performed slightly better in English and Kiswahili.
Out of the 1,214,031 candidates who sat the examination in 28,313 centres, 610,384 (50.28 per cent) were boys and 603,647 (49.72 per cent) were girls.
More females
Magoha also said 12 counties Mombasa, Meru, Isiolo, Tharaka Nithi, Nairobi, Uasin Gishu, Busia, Bungoma, Kakamega, Vihiga, Kisumu and Siaya registered more female candidates.
In 2020, 20 counties, including the 12 above registered more female candidates. Similarly, the number of candidates who were absent decreased from 12,424 in 2020 to 11,523 in 2021 KCPE.
He also said the number of registered candidates who were 12 years and below increased from 26,378 in 2020 to 33,627 in 2021.
The counties which had the highest entry for candidates who were 12 years and below in the 2021 KCPE examination were Baringo, Bomet, Kericho, West Pokot and Nyamira.
