During a briefing on the status of implementation of the recommendations of Presidential Working Party on Education Reforms (PWPER), the Ministry of Education has agreed to change the grading system of the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE). This is so to reflect dominant aptitudes and interests of the schooling learners.
The briefing was led by Education Principal Secretary , Dr Belio Kipsang who stood in the leg of Education CS Ezekiel Machogu. The new grading structure will consider literacy and numeracy abilities. For those students in the remaining cohort of the 8.4.4 system, will have their grades based on performance in five subjects, in addition to their scores in Mathematics and either English or Kiswahili.
According to Dr Belio Kipsang, the system will allow overall grading of students to incur only best perfomed subjects instead of grading them across subject clusters as it has been since the inception of 8-4-4 system of education.
However the PS mentioned change aims to ensure that students with specific interests, such as Medicine or engineering, are not hindered from pursuing their desired courses due to lower grades in other subjects.
” A student with the ability and interest in medicine and engineering need not be prevented from qualifying for the courses just because a subject that was used during his grading has pulled down his or her mean grade,” said the PS. He added that the integration of certification and placement in the exams (KCSE) grading systems has disadvantaged many students with different approaches in abilities and interests.
Dr Belio Kipsang said the new grading structure will consider literacy and numeracy abilities. However, for students in the remaining cohort of the 8.4.4 system, their grades will be based on performance in five subjects, in addition to their scores in Mathematics and either English or Kiswahili.
