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We’re satisfied with results, say private schools

Monday, April 19th, 2021 00:00 | By
Metrin Nasimiyu from St James Academy Nambale celebrates with parents and other students after scoring 414 marks in the KCPE exam results released on Thursday. Nasimiyu was one of the best pupils in Busia county. Photo/PD/Dennis LumitI

Benard Gitau and Irene Githinji 

Private schools in the country say they are satisfied with the recently released Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examination results.

The schools said they have no complaints so far even as they explained that the slight drop in their overall aggregate is due to the effects of Covid 19 in the education sector that made it impossible to have in person learning as well as the prolonged closure of schools last year.

 Kenya Private Schools Association chief executive Peter Ndoro said they are satisfied with results where candidates from public schools dominated the first 15 positions.

Speaking to the People Daily on phone yesterday, Ndoro refuted claims the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) had discriminated against private schools.

“We may not have been number one or dominated the first 15 positions announced by the Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha but if he had gone to top 30, we would have had 19 candidates, out of the 100 top candidates, private schools had 73 and in 1,000 top candidates, private institutions got more than 700,” said Ndoro.

He said the outlook of private schools performance might not be as they had expected earlier but on overall, they performed very well, much better than public schools.

“When you look at how many 400’s private schools had in 2019 KCPE exam, they were about 10,000 but this year is about 8,000.

There is a drop with about 2,000 but despite this, we maintained the top position but the marks the candidates scored is not probably what we expected,” added Ndoro.

Nothing fishy 

 He said this drop does not mean there was something fishy hence the issues about discrimination in performance results does not arise, as the dominance of private schools remains leading in almost all 47 counties.

“I think the only worry that our members or parents in private schools dominated the first 15 positions but they have not looked clearly at the bigger picture of overall performance.

From where I sit, as the CEO of private schools association, there is nothing absolutely that has come to our attention that there was something fishy,” he said.  

“These scenarios affected both private and public learners and, therefore, we should look at the performance in a holistic way of the 1.1 million candidates and there is nothing out of the ordinary in the outcome,” he added.

The assurance by  Ndoro comes after parents and teachers from private schools expressed reservations about the results.

A parent, also a teacher in one of the private schools, who sought anonymity said that they are disappointed with the performance of schools that have always performed better over the years.

The parents said it was not fair that children have put so much work in their eight years in primary school and the KCPE results tell a different story.

“Our children should not be discriminated against based on the schools they went to.

We know that our children had better marks, probably even higher than the top candidate in the country but we are at a loss over what happened.

We know the children deserve better since we put so much hard work into our learners,” said the parent. 

“What will we tell our learners? Does it even make sense for us to insist on hard work only for them to get discouraging marks,?” posed the parent.

Similarly, they are demanding a fair play field for all the candidates, whether they went to public or private, when the time comes for Form One selection, next month.

“A public or a private student, they all deserve a hearing. They all put in hard work to pass their exams and none should be victimised when it comes to placement in Form One,” the parent said.

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