KJSEA results: The beginning of a radical shift

Over 1.1 million candidates who sat the first Kenya Junior School Education Assessment (KJSEA) will today know their examination score, which marks a major shift away from the competition-driven 8-4-4 model. 

For the Grade 9 candidates, today also marks the beginning of their walk towards their future careers which begins soon after the ministry places them in respective pathway schools. 

The country will, for the first time, receive results that do not include merit lists, an aggregate score or school mean scores as the Competency Based Curriculum dream to shape learners' strength and aspirations now takes shape.

Unlike the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE), whose results drew national attention to top schools and candidates, today’s event will focus strictly on individual performance.

Learners will access their own results on the Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) portal, giving a brief of their performance in the nine subjects they wrote between October 27 and November 3.

And for the first time, KNEC will also provide a recommendation on where they are best suited to be placed based on the strengths their results will portray.

The Standard has established that KNEC will generate cluster weights for each learner based on performance across the nine subjects, which will propose a suitable pathway aligned with the senior school structure of Arts and Sports Science, Social Sciences, or Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). 

The Ministry will use the cluster weight, the KNEC recommendation, and the learner’s earlier-declared interests to place candidates into pathways as the CBC rollout progresses.

This now marks the foundation of the country’s shift toward an education system that guides learners by their strengths and long-term aspirations rather than exam pressure.

David Njengere, the Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) chief executive, said the new system ushers in a new dawn in the founding idea of nurturing individual potential rather than rewarding competition between schools.

“CBC envisaged that by the end of Grade 9, a student should be able to identify which direction they wish to take as they join senior school, so this is not about scores but what the candidate's strengths are".

"It might take a while before we get used to it, but ultimately, that is the direction the assessment will lead,” KNEC chief executive told The Standard on Wednesday.

According to officials involved in preparing the brief, the new system is designed to eliminate the traditional “pomp and colour” associated with school rankings, celebrations, and nationwide comparisons.

The score will vary greatly from the KCPE, which was aggregated out of 500 marks earned from the five subjects of Mathematics, English, Kiswahili, Science, and Social Studies and religious studies, each marked out of 100.

This means, schools will not get a meanscore or overall student grade

The marks have now been collapsed under the KJSEA, eliminating the 500-mark race and shifting the focus to subject performance.

The subject performance council has broken into four ranks with eight distinct categories. The highest score is 8, and the lowest is 1.

The ranks include Exceeding Expectation, Meeting Expectation, Approaching Expectation and Below Expectation.

The top performers, scoring between 75 per cent and 100 per cent, fall under Exceeding Expectations (EE). 

Within this group, those scoring 90–100 per cent get 8 points, now dubbed Exceeding expectation 1.

Those with 75–89 per cent get 7 points and they will be ranked as Exceeding Expectation 2.

Students who meet the expected level score between 41percent and 74 per cent. This is the Meeting Expectations (ME) category, where 58–74 percent earn 6 points they will be ranked as and 41–57 per cent earns 5 points.

Those who are close to meeting the expectations fall in the Approaching Expectations (AE) band, scoring 21–40percent. Learners with 31–40 percent receive 4 points, while 21–30% receive 3 points.

The lowest band is Below Expectations (BE), for learners scoring 1–20 per cent. Here, 11–20 per cent earns 2 points, and 1–10 per cent earns 1 point.

But today’s results will not be the sole determinant of where the student proceeds to Senior Secondary school, as KJSEA adopts a hybrid model that combines school-based assessments and the main exam.

Today’s results will only reflect 60 per cent of the learner's total mark in the KJSEA test.

The remaining 40 marks will be split between school-based assessments administered by classroom teachers that are conducted in Grades 7 and 8 which will carry 20 per cent of the final score.

These school-based assessments will include projects, practicals, oral assessments and written tasks. 

The remaining 20 per cent will be the score of the Kenya Primary School Education Assessment(KPSEA).

This means the KPSEA results that previously held no weight in transition from Primary School to Junior Secondary come to play a critical role in their transition to Senior Secondary.

KNEC will also issue a national subject-based performance report analysing how all 12 learning areas performed.

This means the country may, for the first time, begin assessing national competencies through subjects rather than rankings of institutions.

Policymakers will be watching indicators such as future preparedness for STEM careers, interest in agriculture against national food security ambitions, and trends in literacy and numeracy.

Emmanuel Manyasa, the executive director of Usawa Agenda and an education policy maker, argues that the national report will give a glimpse of the junior secondary, which is a new phenomenon.

“The release ceremony is expected to follow the familiar format, but with time, we expect the nature of public engagement to shift and we should analyse and get to know where more resources need to go, where we need to build capacity and other key indicators,” he said.