Cabinet Secretary for Education Julius Ogamba has revealed that more female students than male students sat for the 2024 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination.
According to the CS, this is the first time that the female number has surpassed that of males since KCSE started over 35 years ago.
“During the 2024 KCSE examinations, a total of 962,512 candidates sat for the exams as compared to the 899,453 in 2023. 480,310 were male while 482,202 were female. This is the first time that female candidates are more than male candidates.
“Female candidates recorded a better mean score performance than male candidates in 7 subjects while male candidates recorded a better mean score performance than female candidates in 23 subjects,” Ogamba said as he released the results at Mitihani House on Thursday, January 9, 2024.
Close to a million students sat for the national examination, and the CS said that they have been cleared to join higher educational institutions.
“Today we are releasing the 2024 KCSE results for the 962,512 candidates, all of whom we have cleared to join various higher learning institutions to pursue careers of their choice,” he stated.
With KCSE coming to an end in three years’ time, Ogamba said the mid-year series will be administered for the students who wish to repeat.
“KNEC will introduce a mid-year series of KCSE to be administered in July every year. The exam will target candidates wishing to repeat or those who may have missed sitting in the examinations due to sickness or unexpected hardships,” he continued.
CBC challenges
The CS also addressed challenges that the CBC system is facing, especially infrastructural shortages.
“We surmounted the expected challenges in efforts to place all Grade 8 learners in classrooms at Grade 9. As we speak, we have constructed 14,500 classrooms for our Grade 9 learners, and we are set to achieve the target of 16,000 by the end of this month,” Ogamba added.
