Grade six learners who sat the 2023 Kenya Primary School Education Assessment (KPSEA) exams will have to await for the results to be released before they can officially transition to junior school.
The KPSEA candidates will transition to junior school at Grade 7. The marking of the KPSEA exams was already completed and only compilation and verification was keeping the results.
The KPSEA results will be released alongside Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) this week.
However unlike the KCPE candidates the KPSEA candidates will get the results issued at the school only.
According to official school calendar by Ministry of Education, Primary and secondary schools will reopen today 8th January 2023.
The Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) will release the KPSEA results to public and private primary schools through an online platform.
Schools will download and print the results which will be in certificate form and issue them to parents and the candidates at no cost.
However unlike the pomp and colour that accompanies release of Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) the KPSEA exams will be released silently.
The KPSEA candidates did five subjects; Mathematics, English, Kiswahili, Integrated Science and Social Studies and Creative Arts.
Integrated Science was one paper that combined Science and Technology, Agriculture, Home Science and Physical Health and Education.
Social Studies and Creative Arts was also one paper that combined Social Studies, religious studies (CRE/IRE/HRE), Art and Craft and Music.
The assessment lacked creative writing i.e, English Composition and Kiswahili Insha which were done by KCPE candidates.
This is a major concern by teachers who question why the papers are left out yet creative writing is being taught in schools.
Around 1,415,315 candidates sat for the KCPE exams while a total of 1,282,574 candidates did KPSEA.
All the KPSEA candidates will transition to junior secondary at Grade seven. Parents can use the KPSEA results to transfer their children to another junior school.
All the KPSEA transcripts were marked electronically using special machines.
The marking of multiple-choice questions (transcripts) was done by the modern Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) which electronically scored the papers.
The OMR captures marked data from candidates’ answer sheets using specialised scanning.
The machines work with a dedicated scanning device that shines a beam of light on the paper.
The contrasting reflection at predetermined positions on a page is used to detect marked areas as they reflect less light than the blank areas of the paper.
With the new machines, scripts are marked in batches of 100 and 200 sheets, unlike the previous technology, which took hours.
KCPE results were already released. Big errors were witnessed in this years KCPE results.
Education CS Ezekiel Machogu said the errors were technical errors which happened during transmission of the results.
Last year KNEC CEO David Njeng’ere had said that KPSEA results would be issued in a report form.
“The learners will get individual reports and all these are going to be uploaded on the school portal on January 16, 2023,” Njeng’ere had stated.
He clarified that the results would not be used to place candidates in junior secondary schools but to monitor learner progress.
The KNEC Chief added that the examination body would release three reports on KPSEA: individual, school-specific and national level.
“The national report will provide feedback to educational stakeholders on areas that require intervention. It will indicate the proportion of learners at each performance level per subject where we need to do interventions,”
“Each school will receive specific reports that will delineate the areas that learners had challenges so that they can continue in the journey of improvement,” he explained.
Njeng’ere maintained that the national report will be shared with the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD).
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