In an unusual coincidence, all 17 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) exam candidates from Chingondi Primary in Bomet County who scored the same marks in the 2021 results were admitted to the same secondary school.
The top candidate at the Bomet Central sub-county school scored 110 marks, not 137 as initially reported. They have all been admitted to Muiywek Secondary School.
Previous Reported marks
“In what appears to be fate binding them together for another four years, they have been called to join one secondary school (Muiywek) which is in the neighbourhood,” said a senior teacher at the school.
The teacher, who asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to speak to reporters on the record, claimed the students had gotten their admission letters and were on their way to secondary school.
“What this means is that students will be able to walk to and from school and their parents’ homes.” It puts to rest the rumors that have been circulating about the case for the past month,” he stated.
While the top student received 110 marks, the second-best received 107, and another received 106. The lowest-scoring student had a score of 44.
Students, parents, guardians, and teachers had feared that the results would be thrown out entirely due to allegations – confessed by some of the candidates – that they had copied answers from other sources.
Some parents had lobbied the Ministry of Education and the Kenya National Examinations Council (Knec) to allow students to retake tests or repeat classes.
There were also concerns that the candidates would be denied admission to any secondary school in the country due to their poor performance.
The most affected subjects, mathematics, social studies, and religion, yielded similar outcomes among the candidates.
Except for two students who received 26 and 19 marks in mathematics, the remaining 15 candidates received 17.
Teachers at the school have also been criticized for being unconcerned about their students’ academic achievement, with education officers reporting that they rarely visited to check on syllabus coverage and that parents were hesitant to follow up on their children’s academic progress.
“We have no problems covering the syllabus in English and Kiswahili,” a candidate told the Nation recently, “but the other courses were a significant struggle because the teachers left us on our own.”
It was also discovered that the examination class’s maths teacher was from lower primary.
A senior teacher was also accused of putting his private school in a nearby location ahead of Chingondi students by spending too much time there.
The 17 students took the KCPE exam in the nearby Kipsiwon Primary School because the number of registered competitors was so low. Knec mandated that they be separated from the students at the host school.
